A Viagem do Elefante

This is a pretty quirky little book. The core story is interesting. It chronicles the journey of an elephant from Lisbon to Vienna in the middle of the sixteenth century. There are numerous digressions along the way hinting at the era and location's politics, society, religion, and experience of elephants.

I found the book challenging to read. Jose Saramago has a writing style unlike any I've seen. He does not use paragraphs in the traditional sense - in one stretch of the book, a single paragraph goes on for more than 10 pages, if I recall correctly. Similarly, the period is demoted in the rank of punctuation to lieutenant to the Captain Comma. In one sentence I counted 53 commas (the sentence went on and on for perhaps three dozen lines, nearly a full page). This makes for strange reading. It also means if you get distracted or lose your place, it is a challenge to find it again. The dialogue is also written with minimal attribution, and exchanges all occur mid-sentence without quotation marks. The novel asks a lot of your attention.

The writing is so confounding that if it weren't so funny I wouldn't have finished it. Every few sentences has some quip or morsel that are all in varying degrees insightful, touching, funny, or at least odd. Here are a few of my favorites:

“A part of me learns and the other part ignores everything I've learned, and the longer I live, the more I ignore.” (period added by me.)

“As we know all too well, no one telling a story can resist adding a period, and sometimes even a comma.”

“As the poet said, the pine trees may wave at the sky, but the sky does not answer.”

“It is true that the X did not save the Y, but the fact that he had imagined it meant he could have done, and that is what counts.” (redactions to avoid spoilers.)

A supremely charming and effortlessly memorable book. Positively brimming with quotable gems, incisive remarks, and wise musings that hit hard from left field.

Bizarrely typeset, as if presenting a stream of consciousness, but the format encourages the kind of attentive reading that allows the book's full effect to be appreciated.

Unique, brisk, and well worth the short time it will take to read.