The good
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Intriguing premise: an epidemic of “white blindness” hits the world, rendering almost everyone unable to see over a short period of time.
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A fairly realistic and appropriately dark take on how such a pandemic would play out: the way society descends into chaos, the suffering and death, the way some people abuse the situation to do horrible things, the way others band together to help each other.
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Some occasionally beautiful and moving writing.
The not so good
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The writing, for some reason, sometimes switches to a mechanical-sounding, dry, boring, weirdly self-aware narrator. I found this to be an odd and distracting stylistic choice that detracted from the book.
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The characters alternate from feeling wonderfully human and real to being largely plot devices, designed to move the story along. No one felt fully flushed out or well-defined. Perhaps this was intentional (e.g., they are also not given real names), but I found that took some of the impact away from this otherwise very human story.
Overall
A good, if somewhat uneven, book. Dark and depressing, especially as the world deals with a real pandemic (COVID-19), mostly interesting, and occasionally moving.
