Title: mildly clever, went nowhere
Product review: By way of a metaphor that's as subtle as a train wreck--the Iberian Peninsula shears off from the European land mass and starts floating out to sea--the Portuguese Nobelist Jose Saramago assays the isolation of Portugal and Spain from the rest of Europe and, for that matter, from the rest of the world. The new island drifts first towards America then South; at one point it rotates; but for the most part it just seems to be adrift. Of course, the oddest thing about all this is that the book was published just as Spain and Portugal were formally joining the European Community and officially ending their years in the wilderness.If Mr. Saramago has a coherent point here it was too nuanced for one as literal as I. And since I didn't much care for the group of characters that he follows, I did not care for the book. It seemed like a mildly clever idea for a short story that went nowhere and did so at too great length.GRADE : D+
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