The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Jose Saramago

I had hoped to check Portugal off my to-read list before going to Portugal earlier this month, but instead I carried this book around with me for nearly a month, on three different trips - including my trip to Portugal - and only finally finished it today. (I'm also 3 books behind in my short posts about books, but I wanted to get to this one while it was fresh in my memory.) The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was actually the third Portuguese novel I started. I tried Baltasar and Blimunda several years ago but had a hard time getting into it and then I started The Book of Disquiet earlier this year, but found it wasn't good subway reading making it difficult for me to read it at all. Anyway, I loved The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. It was slow going, and not only because I was reading it during a very busy month of my life -- it's very dense, but the language is beautiful and the text is uncommonly thoughtful. It was a bit strange to read because of the familiarity of the stories. I probably haven't read anything from the New Testament in more than 20 years, but I was once pretty familiar with it. This left me with the feeling of reading something I already knew but only faintly remembered. And, of course, there are differences. The most powerful and moving part of the book for me was when Jesus made God list for him all the people that would die in his name. There are lots of reasons, I'm sure, that this book angered the Catholic Church, but when I got to this section, I was floored. It reminded me a bit of the 200-page chronicling of murdered women in 2666. Though much less detailed and smaller in scale -- this only went on for maybe 4 pages -- the methodical listing of martyrs and their cause of death really drove the point home. I sort of feel like I have to go back and read the four gospels again now.