Customer Reviews

The Stone Raft

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

I read The Stone Raft after Blindness and was immensely impressed by both novels. The story concerns the drift of the Iberian peninsula from the rest of Europe. The premise is intriguing as the stone raft sails into the Atlantic heading for God only knows where. It shifts and turns so that North is South and East is West. This crisis brings together the citizens of Iberia challenged to prepare for the possibility the island will slam into the Azores or Canada or the U.S. possibly leaving cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia inland. The five main characters are brought together by personal miracles and find solace in each other as they witness this drift. I found myself fighting the scientific plausibility of such a phenomenon until I hit this quote: "We're already traveling on a stone raft." Indeed, the planet drifts through the galaxy just as Saramago's stone navigates the currents of the sea. In Blindness I began to realize that Saramago's writing style, devoid of quotation marks, is the grammar of discovery, of a narration of characters trying to find their ways. In Blindness we are challenged to search the text for hints about who is speaking and where the author is venturing. Such a narrative style suits Saramago well as these two novels deal with the search for meaning in a chaotic universe. Such meaning inevitably seems to terminate with the sense we make out of each other. This is a great and wise novel, which I highly recommend.

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.

Jose Saramago seems to have a perpetual liking for journeys. In The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, parades, processions and a long-winded pilgrimage provide the most colourful diversions in an otherwise sombre atmosphere. In Baltasar and Blimunda journeys of all kinds dominate the proceedings -- the laborious journey to transport the big slab of stone, the cavalcade of the royal family, the adventurous trips of the scholar priest in his flying machine and, of course, the long wanderings of the eponymous protagonists.

In The Stone Raft, Saramago goes one step further: he dispatches the whole of the Iberian Peninsula on a hit-or-miss sea voyage. This novel tactic of moving the land and setting it out to sea was the only option left with the author to salvage some pride for his fatherland, Portugal, once a great sea-faring nation, now reduced to political insignificance.

The phantasmagoria of the plot, the parabolic undertones, the lyrical imagery and the occasional philosophical assertions: all evolve out of this improbable locomotion of the big floating island in the sea. Against the backdrop of the separation of the peninsula and its multi-directional propulsion, unfolds the story of the five main characters and their journey for self-discovery. Two women, three men and a dog, each one experiencing an omen at the time of the seismic occurrence, join together imbued with a sense of importance and responsibility.

They continually travel through the peninsula, first in a creaking automobile and subsequently in a horse-drawn cart, `because the world is changing and they have to find in themselves the new persons they will become.' Outlandish and fantastic as these characters may be, they exhibit all the emotions, follies and frailties of ordinary human beings. They feel the sensual appetites, they steal things and display conjugal infidelity, yet their actions are supposed to reflect some cosmic design. Saramago writes,`...for no journey is but one journey, each journey comprises of a number of journeys....Journeys succeed each other and accumulate like generations, between the grandson you were and the grandfather you will be, what father will you have been. Therefore a journey, however futile, is necessary.'

Again, Pedro Orce, one of the travellers, says,`...look here, we're on a peninsula, the peninsula is sailing on the sea, the sea goes round the earth to which it belongs, and the earth turns on itself, and the whole lot heads in the direction of the aforesaid constellation, so I ask myself if we're not the last link in this chain of movements within movements.' So, these characters, who see themselves as people detached from any apparent logic in the world, ultimately fit into some grand logic of human existence.

By way of story this novel does not offer much. All we have is the aimless wandering of the landmass and also of the five characters, both of which terminate abruptly. But the trademark Saramago style of narration and his storehouse of magical imagery provide some enchanting moments to the readers. The unpunctuated, extended paragraphs suit the tone and mood of the novel. The authorial intrusion and constant indulgence of the narrator's persona, tinge the story with subtle humour. See for instance the narrator's comments about one usage,`The weather has changed, an expression of admirable concision which informs us in a soothing and neutrally objective manner that having changed, it has changed for the worse.' Such deft handling of the art of narration reminds the reader of styles of great masters like Borges and Marquez. Like Borges's characters we have here characters busy exploring mental labyrinths and producing magical moments, quite akin to those of Marquez.

Giovanni Pontiero's masterly translation deserves kudos from the readers. The rendering is flawless and natural and it reproduces the nimble pace of the original. Pontiero subtly handles the author's frequent swaying between the serious introspection and humorous asides.

The Stone Craft may not belong to the class of Baltasar and Blimunda and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, but it will never disappoint the serious reader of quality literature, because of its evocative imagery, subtle humour and cultural, moral and political undertones.

Chinmay Hota
Author of 'Hits and Misses'

Like the Iberian peninsula of the title, the reader is swept along on an enchanting, mysterious voyage. Saramago's writing (unconventional in that it forgoes most punctuation) is never obtuse, always engrossing and often quite funny. Like all great writers --in my opinion -- he never sacrifices story while at the same time expressing his ideas. What could have easily been a polemic is instead a rich, lovely book. If you've never read Saramago, this is an ideal book with which to start.

I approached this book with moderate expectations, despite the author's Nobel Prize, mainly due to the fact that I have found most translations inept and stifled. However, both the translation and the book itself were absolutely brilliant. Saramago is one of the few contemporary writers who confronts the essential questions which all great art must. His imagination and lingustic genius surpass virtually all contemporary writers and puts him in the class of Borges, Faulkner and Garcia-Marquez.

"...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."

This book is The Odyssey, a bit of magic realism, an allegory, The Canterbury Tales, and a modern day pilgrammage all in one. This pilgrammage actually traces more or less backwards some of the route of the actual trek to Santiago de Compostela. As you have read from other's summaries, this tale, set against the backdrop of Spain's joining the ECC, starts with a literal split: Spain and Portugal break off from France. This of course leaves several humorous possibilities and ironies which Saramago is quick to exploit. After years of Portugal being more or less Spain's tail, it gains new prominence as the rotation of the peninsula changes. Not only is the peninsula's float halted before the impending collision with the Azores, the whole peninsula rotatates to the right so that the Algarve ends up pointing north. During all this, we follow a group of travelers, all of whom seemed to have a hand in the mischief.

Although I liked Blindness better overall, this book does reflect many of the same themes. One important message seems to be that humans get used to whatever horrible conditions they are forced to live with. In Blindness of course, everyone is forced to deal with the abhorent conditions following the sudden attack of blindness on the whole populace. Here, people are forced to deal with world catastrophe, annihilation (the threat of), looting, stealing, and a total breakdown in the system. Saramago loves to show us how close our civilized society is to breakdown with just minor changes to our living conditions.

There were parts that I thought dragged a bit in the narrative (although his writing his so great that you may not mind and I feel guilty even pointing it out), but things picked up during the final pilgrammage to the sea. At this point, the journey completed, the peninsula stops its northward drift.

Lots of good satire, allegory, and irreverence here. A first time reader may want to start with Blindness before undertaking this book.

"The Stone Raft" is best read after reading one of Saramago's masterpieces, like "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis." By comparison, it will disappoint somewhat. The plot moves slowly, and at times events intended to be realistic do not come across that way. Of course, compared to most literature, "The Stone Raft" is excellent, but compared to certain other novels of Saramago, I would give it a middling rating.

Incidentally, I can tell those Saramago fans who are awaiting the translation of his recent novel "Todos os Nomes" ("All the Names") that it's excellent, and it should be a pleasure to read in English.

The author has an enchanting way of writing. I was glad to see that his extensive and profound knowledge of the Portuguese language was properly translated. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to get to know the works of Jose Saramago. He is a great author; Portugal's best.