It is one of the works of José Saramago's most acclaimed by the Portuguese public. It is the story of a love that grows at the pace of construction of a convent.
The first book I read of Jose Saramago was precisely the Memorial of the Convent and remains one of my favorites. It is a difficult book to read by the lack of punctuation, but at the same time, it is a stroke of genius of the author, why? Because we are required to read the sentence constructions more closely and to witness the aesthetic beauty of the writing, not to lose ourselves or a pinch of one of the most beautiful love stories of Portuguese literature. We have to read the chapters on a breath only to realize the framework for action and scrutinize the little details that make this pictorial book required reading. The beautiful dialogues between the characters must be read from beginning to end, because stopping halfway through is to lose the thread skein.
The character Blimunda, our anonymous heroine, is a character that holds itself special powers, she sees people inside. Baltazar Seven Suns, his beloved, is an adventurer, will help build the flying machine of Father Lawrence, the famous passarola. The background is the construction of the Mafra Convent a promise from the King of Portugal, John V, who by the grace of God was granted with an heir.
Perhaps the building of the memorial church is not secondary to the extent that we follow along the marital life of the kings of Portugal which is a complex process very elaborate and well described in the first chapter and the simple love story and at the same time strange of Blimunda and Baltazar . Even the choice of the names of main characters is so unusual, so no Portuguese. No matter, they will endure for eternity. Good reading.
