FROM OUTSIDE A cobbler's airy window, a little corner of Lisbon unfurls. Voyeurism is inescapable in José Saramago's "new" novel, "Skylight," which peeks in on a shabby apartment building in the 1940s and takes its epigraph from the Portuguese writer Raul Brandäo: "In all souls, as in all houses, beyond the facade lies a hidden interior." The interior at issue in this book is all the heartbreak and tepid dreams of the building's humble residents, who are stuck in "the inquisitorial silence of the past observing us and the ironic silence of the future that awaits us." As a brief introduction explains, Saramago originally submitted "Skylight" for publication in 1953, when he was 31 and beginning a career that would culminate in 1998 with the Nobel (the first for a Portuguese-language writer). But the publisher misplaced the manuscript and never responded, and when it finally resurfaced 36 years later, Saramago opted to hold publication until his death. "Skylight" was published in Portugal in 2011, one year after leukemia killed Saramago - and nearly 60 years after it was written. Does it feel like a beginner's novel? Although "Skylight" is definitely more granular than later, more broadly metaphorical works like "Blindness," the inklings of Saramago's style swell throughout. The cobbler, Silvestre, and his wife take in a boarder named Abel. Despite early apprehensions, Silvestre and Abel become fast friends, engaging in long, rangy conversations about the nature of love, the purpose of life and the supremacy of politics. Silvestre at one point calls himself a "philosophical cobbler" before delving into his passion for socialism. (Saramago himself was a lifelong Communist.) Meanwhile, rejection and illicit love fill the neighborhood: a businessman's faltering love for his mistress; the ingratiation between a wife and her lecherous, abusive husband; the confusing affection between young sisters named Adriana and Isaura. After reading Diderot, Isaura becomes insatiably aroused while sleeping next to Adriana such that, "like iron filings drawn to a magnet, Isaura's mouth fixed itself on Adriana's shoulder." Saramago was especially daring to include such provoking love in 1940s Portugal, during the Estado Novo of Salazar's dictatorship. Decades later, when the same themes of sexuality and assumed impropriety surfaced in "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" (1991), which depicts Jesus as fallible, impassioned and interested in sex, Saramago faced so great a backlash in Portugal that he went into self-imposed exile in Spain. "Skylight" shines in little moments that underscore the awful inanity of a common existence, the compromises we make to live together. When one apartment dweller describes her Spanish hometown to her son, she initially forgets he can't understand her dialect: "She realized then what she was doing and translated the stories into that other hateful language, Portuguese, and the stories, once stripped of their native tongue, lost all their beauty and savor." Their small tragedies and ineffectualities give each of Saramago's denizens a timeless quality - though 60 years distant, nearly all of their tribulations feel salient and heartbreaking today. Saramago's longtime translator, Margaret Jull Costa, buoys the effortless, charming language. As one marriage falters, the wife lies awake at night and wonders: "Yes, all the lovebirds had flown far away, and without the life that only love can engender, the forest had turned to stone." When Saramago first wrote "Skylight," he intended it as a window. The view today is as tender and moving as it would have been in 1953, but - as a "book lost and found in time" - "Skylight" also offers a rarer glimpse into the mind of a then-young writer, and even into the past itself. MIKE BROIDA has written for The Washington Post, The Rumpus, The Iowa Review and other publications.

*Starred Review* In 1953, Saramago submitted a manuscript for a novel to a Portuguese publisher. Thirty-one years old, Saramago was still unknown as a writer; his manuscript was written at night, after his day job. The publisher did not respond not even with a rejection letter and Saramago, discouraged, published nothing for another 20 years. Decades later, after Saramago was well on his way to literary prominence, the manuscript resurfaced, accompanied by a publication offer, which Saramago curtly declined. He would continue to decline publication offers for the lost novel until his death, in 2010. The novel (Claraboya in its original title) depicts the residents of a Lisbon apartment building grappling with their own frustrated longings and ambitions. A Spanish woman in an unhappy marriage dreams of escaping back to her homeland; a philosophical wanderer grapples with loneliness and lack of purpose; an aging kept woman loses her man to a younger neighbor; a loutish husband brutalizes his wife. It is a work about the strictures of poverty and domesticity but also about momentary glimpses of beauty and fulfillment, and as such, it is immediately recognizable as Saramago, even though his political emphases, and his syntax, would evolve over the years. It will be bittersweet delight for Saramago fans, as this selection may well be his final published work.--Driscoll, Brendan Copyright 2010 Booklist

Starred Review. Nobel Prize winner Saramago's never-before-published first novel is an insightful and surprisingly suspenseful story about the tenants in a Lisbon apartment building in 1952. The characters range from Silvestre, the philosopher/cobbler, and his wife, who rent out a room to a young drifter; Lidia, a kept woman, whose lover begins to fancy a younger neighbor; Carmen and Emilio, an unhappy couple whose son is caught in the middle; grieving Justina and adulterer Caetano, who both loathe and desire each other; and sisters Adriana and Isaura, who struggle to keep a sexual secret from their aunt and mother. The daily routines and concerns of each family are rendered with touching detail and are captivating reading in their own right. But soon the complications of life lend an urgency to each character's story that makes this book hard to put down. This novel deals with the quintessential issues of life-love in all its forms, the death of body and soul, the desire for meaning and happiness-set within the simplest of circumstances. VERDICT Saramago's novel is a delightful creation of characters with universal appeal. Readers will want to explore his other works after reading this gem. [See Prepub Alert, 6/8/14.]-Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Completed in 1953 but not released in the author's native Portuguese until 2011 (and appearing here in English for the first time), this early novel from Nobel winner Saramago (Blindness) details the day-to-day exploits of several families and individuals living in an apartment building in Lisbon. Silvestre, a cobbler, and his wife take in a young boarder named Abel. As time passes, the two men launch into a series of conversations on philosophy and existence. Troubled marriages lurk behind the doors of Caetano and Justina-he's a jealous womanizer, while she continues to mourn the death of their daughter-and of Emílio and Carmen, who quarrel over their young son. Seamstress sisters Isaura and Adriana, living with their mother and aunt, find themselves confused after a night of romantic indiscretion. And Lídia, a kept woman, begins to question her lover's intentions after she convinces him to offer a job to her neighbor, a beautiful 19-year-old. Throughout, characters intersect, yet their narratives often proceed without creating a tangled web, making the novel more resemble a linked collection. Saramago, who was still a novice in the 1950s, pads some moments and lingers a bit too long on minor episodes, but overall, the novel spins a series of frank, honest stories that strike deep. This translation offers fans the opportunity to read the pages that helped shape a master. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Rarely has a novel with a publication delayed as long as this one's proven such a pleasure. The so-called "Lost Novel" by the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author has a peculiar history. Saramago (Blindness, 1995, etc.) submitted the book, likely written in the late 1940s or early '50s, for publication in 1953. He never received an acceptance or rejection from the publisher; instead, the manuscript by the then-unknown novelist just sat there. It didn't resurface until 1989, when the publisher discovered the manuscript while moving offices and informed the now-renowned author that it would be eager to publish this early work. He refused, apparently because it was a painful reminder of his struggling days, and didn't want it published during his lifetime. Since his death in 2010, it's been well-received wherever it's been published, suggesting that quality was not the issue. Unlike the author's later allegories, this is more of a dark romantic comedy with philosophical undertones, set in an apartment building occupied by six families. A cobbler and his wife, the only happy couple here, take in a young lodger who has a sense of his destiny unfettered by the usual entanglements: "I have the sense that life, real life, is hidden behind a curtain, roaring with laughter at our efforts to get to know it. And I want to know life." Occupying the other apartments are two married couples, a kept woman, two young sisters with their mother and aunt, and a family with a beautiful young daughter. After introducing all these characters in a confusing rush, the novel lets the reader sort them out as various entanglements reveal themselves, some more interesting than others. Ultimately, the young boarder comes to suspect that "the hidden meaning of life is that life has no hidden meaning." More conventional and less political than the later work that established the author's reputation but an early sign of considerable promise and spirited storytelling. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.