Rebecca Bloomwood is a young woman struggling with her debilitating obsession with shopping and the sudden collapse of her income source. She unintentionally lands a job writing for a Manhattan financial magazine after a drunken letter-mailing mix-up. Ironically, now Rebecca is writing about the very consumer caution of which she herself has not abided. Rebecca's innovative comparisons and unconventional metaphors for economics grants her critical...

Roy Neary is a cable worker who, along with several other stunned bystanders, experience a close encounter of the first kind - witnessing UFOs soaring across the sky. After this life-changing event the inexplicable vision of a strange, mountain-like formation haunts him. He becomes obsessed with discovering what it represents, much to the dismay of his wife and family. Meanwhile, bizarre occurrences are happening around the world. Government agents...

Juan Pablo Castel is a tormented and insane painter who falls for Maria, a woman he meets at an art exhibition. She is married to a blind man -the subject of Sabato and Saramago's obsession- and has a house in the countryside. She is also the mistress of her own cousin. Castel discovers this and goes mad with jealousy. We have no way to know the truth, because everything in the novel happens inside Castel's mind.