powerful story of city vs rural, capitalism vs freedom, creativity vs profit, nature vs sterile modernity, and mostly love vs despair, youth vs aging. It is parents and children and people and animals. (Probably first book I ever liked with prominent dog character.)

Saramago writes without much in the way of punctuation, which in this case adds to the sense of the people, regular working people, struggling to come to terms with powerful contradictions within and around.