I read the book for my book club but I did not enjoy the writing style. The lack of capitalization and the run-on sentences got on my nerves. Perhaps something was lost in translation! I did learn something about European history though and I pulled out a map of Spain and Portugal to determine where the story was actually taking place. Only one or two copies of this novel in the OPL are sufficient!

A delightful book in so many ways! The flow of the writing is unique and pleasing, like nobody else. The little jokes are playful and heartwarming. Through little details you get a great insight into the characters. Loved it.

The true story of the trek across Europe of an Indian elephant and his mahout during the 16th century, told with humour and insight and unusual puntuation.

You learn historical facts. You laugh at the observations and descriptions. You get impatient with the digressions, some of which are quite lengthy and boring. And on several occasions you get completely confused as to who said what because of the writing style which, depending on your mood and patience that day, can be described as either highly creative or utterly demented. Prepare yourself to encounter endless run-on sentences, an unimaginable number of commas, and a few periods (and nothing else in terms of punctuation). Capitalizations appear after commas but never at the begining of a name (unless that name happens to be at the beginning of a sentence).

I enjoyed the first 75% of the book, but got really bored with the last quarter which seemed to include a lot of fluff and digression in order to bulk up the book.

I was given this book as a Christmas present and found it to be a touching and often humorous take on aristocracy and friendship.

I was having troubles to read it at the beginning. I had to push myself, but then... all of a sudden... it went so fast. I really liked it and this is the book I would recomment to read when you are in the mood to think a bit... some phrases (I will put them in Quotes sections) are still in my mind... I guess my patience was rewarded.

I thought that this might be an interesting read, but I just can't take Saramago's writing style. The lack of punctuation and the long run on sentaces littered with commas, the only punctuation used in abundance, drives me crazy. I made it through Blindness years ago, but couldn't bring myself to read Seeing. Now I can't bring myself to read past page 15 in this book. I'd be interested in reading other comments to determine if the story is worth it to suffer through.