Skylight
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
Lisbon, late-1940s. The inhabitants of an old apartment block are struggling to make ends meet. There’s the elderly shoemaker and his wife who take in a solitary young lodger; the woman who sells herself for money and jewellery; the cultivated family come down in the world; and the beautiful typist whose boss can’t keep his eyes off her.
Poisonous relationships, happy marriages, jealousy, gossip and love – Skylight brings together the joys and grief of ordinary people. One of his earliest novels, it provides an entry into Saramago’s universe but was lost for decades and published, as per his wishes, after his death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Completed in 1953 but not released in the author's native Portuguese until 2011 (and appearing here in English for the first time), this early novel from Nobel winner Saramago (Blindness) details the day-to-day exploits of several families and individuals living in an apartment building in Lisbon. Silvestre, a cobbler, and his wife take in a young boarder named Abel. As time passes, the two men launch into a series of conversations on philosophy and existence. Troubled marriages lurk behind the doors of Caetano and Justina he's a jealous womanizer, while she continues to mourn the death of their daughter and of Em lio and Carmen, who quarrel over their young son. Seamstress sisters Isaura and Adriana, living with their mother and aunt, find themselves confused after a night of romantic indiscretion. And L dia, a kept woman, begins to question her lover's intentions after she convinces him to offer a job to her neighbor, a beautiful 19-year-old. Throughout, characters intersect, yet their narratives often proceed without creating a tangled web, making the novel more resemble a linked collection. Saramago, who was still a novice in the 1950s, pads some moments and lingers a bit too long on minor episodes, but overall, the novel spins a series of frank, honest stories that strike deep. This translation offers fans the opportunity to read the pages that helped shape a master.
