Hearing the news of José Saramago's passing today at the age of 87, we couldn't help but think of the author's playful parrying with death and immortality in his recent novel, Death With Interruptions, in which the reaper takes a vacation and causes people to live too long. As Jason Weiss wrote in his 2009 review for Bookforum, "the implications of life everlasting become evident, and the blessing begins to resemble a curse . . . [Saramago] refreshes the old trope of immortality by treating it as fertile ground for playing out his incisive variations, exploring not only our fear of death but our fear of life as well."
