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Title: The Stone Raft by José Saramago ISBN: 0156004011 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.13
Rating: 4
Summary: A dream flourishing in the reader's mind...
Comment: I have read José Saramago's Stone raft in Portuguese, some years ago. I encourage everyone to read this book, even if I cannot speak about its translated versions. The Stone Raft has left me a very strong impression, above all for the author's style: his very particular ponctuation produces a very lively reading. The story just blooms in one's mind, and the author's rythm - his very breathing - takes control of the reader, which can't help but following the characters' trip through a deriving Iberian Peninsula. Arriving at the end of the last page is like awakening from a dream: I couldn't tell the story of the novel then, just as I'm unable to do it now. Still, I find this quite significant to point out: The Stone raft, which is about the Iberian Peninsula separating from Europe, was published in 1986, the year when Portugal and Spain joined the European Community. Separating us from Europe in the moment we were achieving to join it, indeed creating a new "us" that has been thoroughly refused for centuries, could not have been the fruit of hazard. Indeed, this was not the most evident way of inventing a disoriented world where people that didn't know each other met on the road, gathered by a surnatural experience. I feel here that, unlike most novels, the background itself is of an utmost importance - not only a pretext to a story - and the "conclusions" of the novel are intimately linked to the pertinence of that imagined reality. Was Saramago doing his part of "Velho do Restelo" (Luís de Camões' skeptic character who tries to persuade portuguese navigators of the dangers of their enterprise)? Likely so, but let us not condemn too quickly the Velhos do Restelo of all times, and acknowledge what Saramago, maybe unvoluntarily, reveals: skepticism about the ways of our time is simultaneously a reactionnary attitude and a revolutionnary virtue, for time doesn't go backwards, and in 1986, only a geographical revolution - or an imaginary one - could keep things as they were for Portugal and Spain.
Rating: 5
Summary: THERE COMES A TIME WHEN PRIDE HAS NOTHING BUT WORDS¿
Comment: I bought The Stone Raft several months after Saramago won the Nobel Prize, and I cannot pretend I had even heard of him before that time. I was wandering a bookstore in Reykjavik looking for something new and interesting. I figure that most of the time the Nobel committee selects authors for an outstanding body of work, so I trust their judgment. Having just finished read the majority of Nadine Gordimer's works, I was seeking a fresh voice, but something equally as intelligent and entertaining. The Stone Raft seemed a promising title with a most ridiculous and fantastic premise-Spain and Portugal breaking off the European continent and floating off into the Atlantic. I had not seen something this promising in ages. I bought The Stone Raft and The History of the Siege of Lisbon at the same time, and I immediately delved into The Stone Raft. It was slow going at first, and I could feel a great wave of disappointment creep over me because this was really not as interesting as I anticipated... but WAIT! Within 20 or 30 pages, I was riveted. I am not sure what transformation took place in the course of those pages, but suddenly this was a book I could not put down. I didn't put it down again until I finished it.
Other people have provided plot synapses and analysis, so I won't bore you with further repetition on that subject. All you need to know is that Saramago is one of the most brilliant writers alive, this is one of the most creative books of the 20th century, and Saramago's ability to pose questions that seem at once quite obvious but at the same time quite obscure is uncanny. Saramago's brilliance for observing minutiae in people's daily lives and behaviour is remarkable, and his characters are unforgettable and lively. You will never regret making the time to read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: A powerful imagination, a magical novel
Comment: "...how all things in this world are linked together, and here we are thinking we have the power to separate or join them at will, how sadly mistaken we are, having been proved wrong time and time again, a line traced on the ground, a flock of starlings, a stone thrown into the sea, a blue woolen sock, but we are showing them to the blind, preaching to the deaf with hearts of stone."
This passage, from the last few pages of José Saramago's novel "The Stone Raft," acts as both summation and re-introduction to the story. I can include it here, and even say that it is critical to understanding the nature of the idea behind this book, without giving anything specific about the book away. All of the things that it describes specifically happen in the first chapter or two. The book's themes, present troughout the story, are summed up elegantly above.
"The Stone Raft" is an impressive novel, in many ways. It is the second of Saramago's books that I have read, "All the Names" being the first. While I found "All the Names" to be well-written, clever, and imaginative, "The Stone Raft" surpasses it easily. It tackles a difficult concept within the first few chapters, an event which changes the world dramatically. I've found that most writers, when beginning with such a concept, either pull their punches and fail to take their story as far as it could go, or they quickly devolve into trite reiterations of common morality and sentimentality. Saramago does neither. His story is one of fantasy, in many ways, but it is a fantasy based in the real world, and Saramago proves himself to be a remarkably gifted fantasist as he carries his story all the way to the end without faltering.
The premise of "The Stone Raft" lies in a seemingly cataclysmic event: the breaking away of the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain) from the rest of Continental Europe. The peninsula (now an island of sorts) simply fractures off and floats away across the ocean. While the larger story of this and its effect on the rest of the world is told as well, the majority of the book focuses on five people who live on the Peninsula, each of whom feel that they are somehow connected to the breakaway. The story follows their journey as they come together, and then of the relationships that develop between them. Through it all, Saramago remains constant to his purpose; whether telling the story of the floating island or detailing the lives of these five individuals on it, his themes and style are maintained.
Mind you, Saramago is not an easy author to read. His themes are challenging, to be sure, but his prose itself is equally so. He writes in long, meandering sentences, embedding key points of story in what might seem at first like a tangent. He eschews the standard grammatical use of quotes and paragraph divisions in his dialogue, so that conversations between characters are read as single paragraphs, with no quotes to tell you when one character stops talking and another starts. These are the ways that polite authors make it easy for their readers to understand their work, and I suppose that means that Saramago is not as polite as many writers. Said simply, "The Stone Raft" (and Saramago's work in general) is not for the light reader, looking for a bit of evening entertainment before they drift off. I'm risking sounding a bit elitist here, but to be perfectly honest, this is deeply challenging reading, and is probably not for just the casual reader. In defying many standard conventions of modern letters, Saramago is placing part of the burden on his readers to adjust to his style of writing.
What's amazing to me is that, despite these difficulties, which would probably be barriers for most writers, Saramago makes it work for him beautifully. He spends time actually establishing his characters, and so even though the standard puncuation of dialogue is absent, conversations can still be understood if read carefully. His sentences, seemingly endless at times, are constructed carefully. Like the partial sentence quoted above, they each hide buried treasure, small gems that collectively add to the value of the story as a whole. In these constructions, he often touches on philosophy, political commentary, history, whimsical humor, all while carrying the story forward. If you just graze over the prose, you'll most likely miss many of the bits of wisdom he plants here and there. "There are endless answers just waiting for questions," is a sentence representative of the need to read this book carefully. Complexity does not necessarily mean skill, but in Saramago's case his complex prose leads to a work of rare beauty. It may well represent a challenge to many readers, but it is a book undeniably worth the effort. The more a reader puts into reading it, the more they are likely to get out of it.
This is not a book to be devoured quickly overnight. Time should be taken to read and re-read some of the passages in "The Stone Raft." The spread of the phrase "We are Iberians too," around Europe, in all its different languages; the elegant device of a blue thread, linking two characters perfectly; from the opening paragraphs to the final pages the book deserves a careful, studious reading. Some books seem to be written out of sheer love of crafting language, while others seem to exist simply to tell a story. "The Stone Raft" is that rare novel which accomplishes both goals admirably.
A line traced on the ground. A dog who does not bark. A flock of starlings. A man who can feel the earth trembling. A stone thrown into the sea. A peninsula that suddenly and inexplicably becomes an island. A blue woolen sock. How are these things connected? "The Stone Raft" does not answer these questions for you, but gives you enough that you might be able to find the answers for yourself. In its pages, while telling a story of an event that literally changes the world, José Saramago explores the mysteries that we all are confronted with every day, and he does so with consummate skill.
"For even if my life's journey should lead me to a star, that has not excused me from travelling the roads of this earth."
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Title: All the Names by Jose Saramago, Margaret Costa ISBN: 0156010593 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago, Jose Saramago, Giovanni Pontiero ISBN: 0156005204 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 05 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago ISBN: 0156001411 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Cave by Jose Saramago, Margaret Costa ISBN: 0151004145 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Blindness by José Saramago ISBN: 0156007754 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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