Skylight - Softcover

Saramago, José; Costa, Margaret Jull

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0544570375 ISBN 13: 9780544570375

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2015

Synopsis

“The inklings of Saramago’s style swell throughout . . . Skylight shines.” — New York Times

“Unmistakably Saramago . . . There is no shortage of wonders to be found in [Skylight].” — Washington Post
 
“A fascinating and startlingly mature work . . . The book is a gem.” — Boston Globe
 
Lisbon, late 1940s. The inhabitants of a faded apartment building are struggling to make ends meet: Silvio the cobbler and his wife take in a disaffected young lodger; Dona Lídia, a retired prostitute, is kept by a businessman with a roving eye. Humble salesman Emilio’s Spanish wife is in a permanent rage; beautiful Claudinha’s boss lusts for her; Justina and her womanizer husband live at war with each other. Happy marriages, abusive relationships, jealousy, gossip, love—Skylight is a portrait of ordinary people painted by the master of the quotidian, a great observer of the immense beauty and profound hardship of the modern world.
 
“The gifted young Saramago makes these characters click together in a way that's extremely sympathetic.” — NPR, All Things Considered
 
“It was only a matter of time before a work of such extraordinary honesty and perception would make its way into the world.” — San Francisco Chronicle

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, December 2014: Anyone who has ever lived in an apartment building is familiar with the unique intimacy that such dwellings unintentionally provide. You may never see your upstairs neighbor, but you know that he wakes up at 6am sharp, grinds his coffee beans, and has a parrot that knows how to say a few choice curse words. Sometimes you know far more--stories pieced together by casual encounters in common areas, or bits of conversations overheard through too-thin walls...In the previously unpublished novel, Skylight, the late, great José Saramago gives us unfettered access to the lives of several tenants in a Lisbon apartment building in 1940—lives that intersect and sometimes clash in shocking ways. Saramago’s gift for penning well-drawn female characters is on full display here, as is his mastery of illuminating the extraordinary in the mundane. But Skylight is also a very philosophical novel in Saramago’s signature style, one in which the characters wrestle with profound questions, questions the reader will grapple with long after the last page is turned. –Erin Kodicek

Book Description:

HMH hardcover 2014, previous ISBN 978-0-544-09002-6

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0544570375
• ISBN 13: 9780544570375
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320