It certainly won't be difficult for some overpaid script doctor to turn Nobel-prize winning author Jose Saramago's new novel, Death With Interruptions, into Hollywood's next box-office smashing romantic comedy. Christ, Saramago's done half the work already. First he took death, historically a macabre sort of creature, and made her into a sexy lady. This death lady loves dogs, has a spunky, talking scythe as a roommate, and a doomed, Buffy/Angel-style crush on a mysterious musician. Also? Her job majorly sucks, in her opinion. So, after centuries of delivering the ultimate downer, hot lady death goes all Office Space and just stops working. And then? Well, people just stop dying and she is free to catch up on long-neglected correspondences.

But just when you get to feeling lousy about what lies ahead, "the greatest writer of our time"—according to the Chicago Tribune—transforms the admittedly weak premise into a wry, smart, absurd, original novel. Is it magic? No, it's something even more elusive—really effing good writing.

If you've read any of Saramago's other books, you know that his themes are often based on the macro and microcosmic ramifications of a giant what if—what if the Iberian peninsula broke off of the European continent and drifted around the Atlantic? What if a contagious epidemic of blindness swept the country (and ultimately resulted in a highly promoted movie starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo)? He's really question-y.

The end of death question, to Saramago, results not in the glamorous vision you may be hoping for. The country is suddenly overflowing with cranky, incontinent old folks and still-breathing but decapitated accident victims. The life insurance, nursing home, and funeral industries are, naturally, in shambles. It doesn't sound funny, but Saramago is masterful at turning the awkward fumblings of humankinds' attempts to control the uncontrollable into unexpected comedy gold, and the scenes where various high-ranking government, church, and mob officials debate how best to publicly spin this new immortality play out like a classic Monty Python sketch. (Part of the government's plan to save the failing funeral industry is to pass a law requiring that all pets—hamsters, say—be ceremoniously embalmed and buried. Embalmed hamsters! Can you even stand it?)

Still, Death With Interruptions is a dense read, and feels a bit like an e-mail William Faulkner might write were he in a rush to get out of the office in time for happy hour. The punctuation is way screwy. Saramago's sentences are complex and looong (you may spot a period every two or three pages), and he uses commas like the Smurfs use the word Smurf—as a substitute for everything else. No quotes, colons (semi or otherwise), exclamation points, or paragraphs. The effect can be disorienting, and makes it difficult to read while on the elliptical machine at the gym. Conversely, it does help to provide an excuse for why you are unable to go to the gym. Another bonus, unlike Blindness, Death With Interruptions is refreshingly light-of-tone, rape-free, and doesn't have that depressing apocalyptic feeling of impending doom. In a word, Smurftastic.