The Double by Jose Saramago

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The Double? Uh, okay. It's a... book. With characters. And um, conflict. It's engaging... somehow. I guess my big problem about it is afterwards, I don't care much about the characters and the conflict. And how I was engaged when I was reading it.

The Double seems cute enough. There's this boring old guy who found out that somewhere out there, there's a person exactly just like him. Not his twin, not a clone or anything. Just someone exactly like him. Not even that, the person is him, except with the different wives and jobs and lifestyles and all that. It's supposed to rattle our affinity with individualism and glorified uniqueness. And of course, Jose Saramago did a pretty good job in outlining the perfect breakdown for that unimaginable situation. However, it's just that, I really can't bring myself to caring.

One, I've always felt like there's no originality nowadays. We're all sheep. Let's deal with this.

Two, the lead boring old guy is a jerk. An understandable jerk, you have to give him that, but a jerk nonetheless. The psychological background on his fear of commitment does not justify stringing along his lover. As Kimya Dawson said, having been fucked is no excuse for being fucked up.

Three, although I knew something bad was going to happen in the end, the actions and situations seemed a bit forced and rushed.

Four, don't get me started on women characters, their only worth in the story is to be used for revenge.

Not that the author is not aware of the cliché-ness of all these things. A lot of the writing's very self-aware and intentionally horrible that it's really funny. And yes, in a good way, because yes, the author was making a joke about the story too.

All in all, the story was meh but I would probably want to read The Double for Jose Saramago's writing style anyway because I finally found someone who thinks it's okay to disregard commas, periods, and paragraphs without resorting to gibberish narrative.

6/10