All the Names follows Senhor José, a clerk at the Central Registry in an unnamed city. His workplace is where the records of all births, marriages, and deaths are held. The records of the dead enter what is essentially a bureaucratic black hole, a dark space in the rear of the office, which must continually be extended to accommodate the additional dead. Senhor José collects tidbits about certain famous people and in the course of his research, he chances on the record of an ordinary woman, who becomes an obsession for him. Her record serves as a revelation to him, showing how little the Central Registry actually "knows" about the people in its records. His desire to discover the real woman takes him out of the routine of his life and makes him do things he never would have considered previously.
The most moving part of the book for me was when Senhor José visits the Central Cemetery, a sort of sister bureaucracy to the Central Registry. Like the Registry, the Cemetery is continually expanding to accommodate the new dead, and yet remains largely unvisited by the living. In a miles-long walk through the cemetery, Senhor José walks through the history of humanity in his city.
I wouldn't say that I didn't like All the Names, but the entire book felt like a metaphor for something that I wasn't quite able to grasp.
