The Iberian peninsula breaks off from Europe and starts floating across the Atlantic. Five people who feel they may each bear responsibility for the unusual, to say the least, event cope with it and try to understand. A dog helps them and watches. And a world unfolds.
And humans are understood (as far as they can be understood) through both small, mundane details and the enveloping surreal whole. There's an ending of sorts, but no more of an ending than any story about humanity.
Saramago was a master of telling stories on both an intimate and grand scale simultaneously, always with people at their core. This is a prime example of his art. It is inimitable, yet it also seems to ring with faint echoes of Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Odyssey and probably other works. There is humour, sadness and wonder, and a political comment or two. A completely surreal event somehow seems plausible.
It's hard to imagine another writer carrying this off. The reason is Saramago's inexhaustible but never forced invention: every paragraph is a delight because every paragraph goes off in a direction that could not be predicted but that somehow makes sense. Other writers use strangeness and unpredictability to reach for effect; Saramago makes them seem part of ordinary life, and somehow inevitable in the stories he tells.
Some of the political asides — first published in Portugal in 1986 — resonate freshly in 2017, as in this description of how the United States of America may rescue the people of the Azores Island from an impending collision with the large floating Iberian land mass: "(I)t has declared that given the circumstances, it is nevertheless willing to evacuate the entire population of the Azores, which is just under two hundred and fifty thousand people, although there is still the problem of where to settle all those people, certainly not in the philanthropic United States, because of the strict immigration laws."
Consumer note: I actually read the Harcourt Brace softcover, which has the same cover illustration as the hardcover but is for some reason not among the editions included in the Goodreads list. It was published in trade paperback size but was printed in a small type size that usually shows up in pocketbooks and in what looks like an unusual font: the combination of font and size made this physically harder to read than just about any book I've seen for years.

Cu omul începe ceea ce nu e vizibil. (p. 252)

... există fericirea, a spus vocea necunoscută, și poate nu e mai mult decât atât, mare, lumină și năucire. (p. 278)

Another classic Saramago I am glad I finally read.

I have come to love Saramago's lyrical prose and the way he writes about ordinary people living their ordinary lives until something happens that turns everything upside down. This novel is no exception. In The Stone Raft, Saramago describes how the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the rest of Europe and starts to drift into the Atlantic, almost collides with the Azores, then continues toward North America. We follow Joaquim Sassa as he travels across Portugal and Spain, trying to make sense of what happened to the peninsula, and meeting up with four other characters that have the same doubts as he. Add to that the bizarre images that Saramago entertains us with: Imagine standing on Corvo, the most northern island of the Azores, and watching the Iberian peninsula drifting by, this gigantic Stone Raft, at a speed of 50 kilometers per hour. Visions like these can only come from Saramago’s mind, of course, but wouldn't it be a fantastical sight?
Or think of Joaquim and his friends walking all the way to the northern boundary where Spain broke off from France, crawling the last few meters on all fours for fear of falling off, to the point where the French Pyrenees should have been but instead, an 800 meter high precipice appears with the Atlantic Ocean foaming at the bottom.
Written right before Portugal and Spain joined the list of EU members in 1986, the Stone Raft is not without a deeper meaning. But whether you read it as a political message or as a fable, once you are in the grip of Saramago’s unique prose, this one can hardly disappoint.

I struggled to adjust to Saramago’s style at first. There were many moments when punctuation would have helped, but then there were other moments when the seemingly endless commas achieve a palpable, discursive tempo. Halfway through I still felt it was eccentricity for the sake of it, but looking back again now I do feel Saramago truly captured a different way of reading- making that narrative voice in one’s head SAY rather than HEAR. It will now take me a while to snap out of Saramago’s rhythm!

I love the plot of the Stone Raft. I love how it so elegantly flips from apocalyptic global politics to mundane life. I love how the six characters (dog included) and the narrator effortlessly switch from big philosophies to happily chilling, flexing their minds and stretching their legs down the page. I feel a real affinity with Saramago’s politics, as analysed in Mark Sabine’s ‘Once But No Longer the Prow’ (2001). I feel an itch that their expression within The Stone Raft has probably been overlooked outside of Portugal. Reminder (to self) that if you want to read a Nobel winner, then best start with their 5th or 6th most popular work.

Also cool to visit Saramago’s olive tree grave in Lisbon and pick this up!

Estará para nascer, ou crescer, aprender a ler e escrever, e deixar-lhe passar mais 50 anos em cima (mas por favor que não leve tanto), alguém que saiba contar histórias como Saramago continua a saber.
Não soube e dei por mim a viajar nesta jangada também, e quando entrou a bordo Joana Carda, não consegui fugir mais.
Talvez tenha sido este estagnar do mundo que tenha dado outro charme à narrativa, talvez tenha deixado passar muito tempo sem ler Saramago e me tenha deixado esquecer do seu génio, mas dei por mim também despegada, rachada como a península, ao separar-me deste livro por tê-lo terminado.
A Jangada de Pedra, que sempre subestimei, levou-me para longe numa altura em que não podemos estar perto. É poderosa assim a literatura, e se não há nada que nos valha, que sejam as ficções a chegar-nos, a agarrar-nos pela mão, e levar-nos aos sítios aonde sempre nos esperam.

This is the second straight book by Saramago that has left me underwhelmed. I've read so many of his books and was completely blown away by several of them, but The Stone Raft is going to join n  The Elephant's Journeyn at the bottom of the list.

In this case, I found Saramago's patented deviations, in which he speaks directly to the reader or goes off on some tangent, to be burdensome distractions to the plot, which was an impressive exercise of imagination. I really wanted to know what was going to happen to the peninsula that had broken off from Europe and set adrift on the sea. I wanted to know why the main characters experienced the strange phenomena that they did and how that was tied in to the peninsula's fate. Later, I wanted to know how the burgeoning relationships amongst the travelers were going to play out. And while I got these answers – to varying degrees – they could not be achieved without laboring through the numerous asides that were sometimes welcome, but sometimes unwanted.

Still with all that being said, I did enjoy this book and Saramago, despite these last two ho-hum experiences, will remain among my favorites. After all, throughout The Stone Raft, not only did he craft an amazing tale, he did so while intertwining politics, love, spirituality and great passages like:

"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. There a journey, however futile, is necessary."

A 300 page ramble worthy of Grandpa Simpson. I tapped out about 25% of the way in. There might be some kind of point or meaning buried in this book, but I couldn't be bothered to find it.

If you are looking to try out Saramago, start with Blindness.

Like the best of Jose Saramago's works, this one was beautifully written and full of wisdom, compassion, and truth. With his deep understanding of human emotions, he seems to effortlessly depict both our joys and sufferings. I really enjoyed The Stone Raft although it wasn't my favorite. I would like to read it again, more closely, perhaps, to better understand this enchanting allegory. I recommend this book to any new or recent admirer of the Iberian master.

A Delight of Wit, A Dearth of Plot

One day Iberia breaks off from Europe. It's clean, it's neat, almost nobody gets hurt. Before you can say "Fernando Pessoa", Spain and Portugal are floating out into the Atlantic. Geologists can't make head or tail of all this free-form continental drift, but what they don't cotton on to is that it's probably all due to a dog, people who draw a line in the sand, feel a certain dizziness, unravel a blue sock, and other minutiae. Logic has nothing to do with what happens, in this book as well as in life. We, the readers, are clued in by the author, who gathers all the "culprits" together in a group that then go on various "Iberiadas" around the stone raft, an immense vehicle that even swerves to miss the Azores. Well, you guessed it, you are reading a fantasy.

Saramago's strong suit is irony. He's an extremely clever man with plenty of wit and humor to keep the reader amused for 292 pages, even though, as they all say, it is hard to translate humor. Life is a comedy of errors, so it isn't implausible that if once a Portuguese nobleman went off in search of an imaginary island, a floating Iberian island could go off to sea in search of imaginary men. Meanwhile, back on the pages, Saramago dispenses with ordinary little objects like question marks or quotation marks. Perhaps it's because the whole book is a question or maybe it could be due to the fact that the author doesn't see much difference between questions and answers. It could be your flavor of the moment, if missing punctuation is your thing.

Well, OK, I admit it. I could not figure out exactly what this novel is about, though I rather enjoyed it anyway. Is it a political allegory about Iberia's cultural dis-similarities with Europe and a protest against Spain and Portugal's joining the EC ? Is it about how the social edifice collapses (topic of many less-literary science fiction novels) in times of crisis ? Is it a gentle reminder to readers about the possibility of change in life ? That it shouldn't take geological transformation of the earth to allow them---if you remove people from their daily fetters, what miracles could they perform ? After innumerable philosophical observations served up with admirable levity, our dear characters betray one another. The magic is over. Iberia screeches to a halt. "Time and time again" we learn, "there are no riches whatsover, where, out of malice or ignorance, we promised we would find them." Our nowhere men (and women) return home. Aren't they a bit like you or me ? If allegories without clear meanings resonate in your bell tower, give Amazon a ring. I can't call THE STONE RAFT a "thriller", but it's highly original writing for sure.

"neputând veşnicia să dureze la nesfârşit"

"cred în ceea ce trebuie să se întâmple"

"se prea poate să avem, pe nepusă masă, soarta altcuiva"

"vieţii îi place să cultive, când şi când, sensul dramaticului"

"nu-i de la nuia, nu-i de la persoană, a fost de la clipă, clipa contează"

"corpul înţelept se milostiveşte de noi, simulează în sinea sa satisfacerea dorinţelor, chiar acesta e visul, ce altceva credeţi, dacă n-ar fi aşa, spuneţi-mi atunci cum am putea suporta viaţa asta lipsită de satisfacţii"

"zău că oamenii sunt inconştienţi, se aruncă pe o plută pe mare şi continuă să se ocupe de viaţa lor ca şi cum ar sta pe un pământ neclintit pentru veşnicie"

"visau cu voce tare"
"cerul era înalt"
"au ajuns la Lisabona pe înserate, la ceasul în care străvezimea cerului umple sufletele de o întristare fără nume [...] peisajul este o stare sufletească"

"este o anumită armonie în obrajii slabi, nimeni nu are obligaţia să fie frumos"

"dacă n-am s-o văd, înseamnă că n-a existat niciodată [...] pentru ca să existe lucrurile sunt necesare două condiţii, ca omul să le vadă şi ca omul să le pună un nume"
"cum poţi privi un lucru fără să-i pui un nume"
"o planetă care merge în jurul unei stele, rotindu-se, rotindu-se, fie zi, fie noapte, fie frig, fie cald, şi un spaţiu aproape gol unde există obiecte gigantice care nu au alt nume decât cel pe care li-l dăm noi, şi un timp despre care nimeni nu ştie cu adevărat ce este"

"dacă vei avea cândva un fiu, el va muri pentru că tu te-ai născut, de crima asta nimeni nu te va ierta"

"în diverse arte, şi mai cu seamă în aceasta a scrisului, cel mai bun drum între două puncte, chiar dacă apropiate, nu a fost, şi nu va fi, şi nu e linia care se numeşte dreaptă niciodată şi în vecii vecilor"

"cuvintele nu spun ceea ce ar trebui, sunt prea multe, sunt prea puţine"

Physical secession of Iberian peninsula presents novel opportunities for mating.

We are told at the opening that the “entire universe was nearing its end” on account of the chorus of dogs in Cerbere (1). We are reminded “the world is coming to an end” before the end (260). Though this is presented as hearsay within the setting, it’s an accurate designation of the genre, as the novel adopts the apocalyptic. It’s mostly a travelogue, though, both of the peninsula and several characters thereupon. Those parts are less engaging than the general political sections, regarding how various states handle the secession, such as if the peninsula were to “drift forevermore over the seven seas, like the oft-cited Flying Dutchman, and the peninsula is currently going by another name, tactfully suppressed here to avoid any outbursts of nationalism and xenophobia, which would be a tragedy under the circumstances” (239).

That said, hard for me to detect much rising action, denouement, &c. Perhaps I’m too aristotelian or freytagian or whatever. We are reminded at one point that “the only logical conclusion to be drawn from all that we have witnessed so far is that the journey was not worthwhile” (222). I feel you, brother.

Recommended for those who deplore this yielding to the temptations of anthropomorphism, readers who think that putting nets on trees within everyone’s reach is just like getting other men’s wives pregnant, and persons who prefer to say this impressive feat of engineering that links the two banks of the river, because this construction, we are referring to the sentence, is periphrastic, and is used here to avoid repeating the word bridge, which would result in a solecism, of the pleonastic or redundant kind.