Raised from the Ground in Around the World

Nov 18, 2013 Nick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Jose Saramago was an iconoclast's iconoclast, earning his acerbic view of society, government and mankind as the child of landless Portuguese agricultural workers during the Salazar dictatorship. "Raised from the Ground" is an impressionistic account of a family in an agricultural community; in a way it is the inverse of all the novels about upper-class families losing their economic and social grip that are a persistent theme across the world -- "Buddenbrooks", "The Leopard", even China's "The Jose Saramago was an iconoclast's iconoclast, earning his acerbic view of society, government and mankind as the child of landless Portuguese agricultural workers during the Salazar dictatorship. "Raised from the Ground" is an impressionistic account of a family in an agricultural community; in a way it is the inverse of all the novels about upper-class families losing their economic and social grip that are a persistent theme across the world -- "Buddenbrooks", "The Leopard", even China's "The Dream of Red Chambers". But among Saramago's case, it is less a matter of scions failing to live up to the family grandeur than of poor men trying to claw their way out of the family poverty. The land and the struggle to make something of it--struggle in the sense of class war, since Saramago was a communist, although, in accordance with his nature, an iconoclastic one--are what matters here. Not that there aren't vivid characters here, from the doomed drunk who stands at the head of the family to his children and their wives. The landowning oppressors are deliberately confounded, all of their names almost interchangeable, ending in -berto: Lamberto, Norberto, and the like. And the police and soldiers who do their brutal bidding are somewhat more individual, since Saramago is so passionate about those who have nothing, even if they become enforcers for the regime. Saramago's energy in creating this world is boundless and breathless, stretching back in time to the original conquest and rape (literally) of the peasants, and all around this small world. He has little use for the conventions of fiction in any realm, not just paragraphing and punctuation, which makes reading him feel a little like shooting the rapids. One of the most riveting sections is a beating of a character who does not otherwise figure in the novel. In an age when we can see depictions of extreme violence on television, Saramago finds a way to give a scene of a beating a power far beyond that of any "horror film" -- it is narrated from the perspective of an ant that sees the impact of the bodies without understanding, and for a moment, even for a moment by water that happens to be on the scene. Saramago, whether inserting a brief trope about the past or detouring for a moment into the life of an ancillary character, is all about immediacy, about making these peasants, their hunger, their desires, their primitive efforts to organize, and the punishment meted out to them, intensely vivid, to the point that the novel seems less to end than to cease inspiring him to continue. ...more

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Jul 21, 2013 Lilisa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, portugal, around-the-world-2015, 2015

Set in southern Portugal, the book follows the families of laborers who toil away on the latifundio or large estates owned by the wealthy. The story revolves around the Mau-Tempo family who travels to wherever they can find work beginning with the colorful Domingos Mau-Tempo, a cobbler who is akin to a traveler who gathers no moss and who has a propensity to be in love with alcohol. The story spans the family’s lives over three generations. The book captures the harsh life of the peasant family ...more

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Aug 21, 2015 Salma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

هذا الريفيو بعيد كل البعد عن التعليق علي تطور شخصيات الرواية أو مسار الأحداث أو حتى عقدها
فتلك أشياء لا طاقة لى بها بل هو عن "ساراماجو و ما علق بذهنى من روايته" بنفس القدر.

يحكى ساراماجو عن
طبيعة "لا تحصي الموتى بل تعد الأحياء وعندما يزيد عدد هؤلاء،تبتكر طريقة جديدة لإماتتهم"
أهى الطبيعة أيضا يا ساراماجو التي بحركة عصبية تهدد بسبابتها كائن خيالى ضاحك عندما تزيد الجرعة المقررة من
الفرح علي ظهر الكوكب فأبتكرتك لتخفف من حدتها وتجهز على ما بقى فى دواخل قراءك من قصص سعيدة
كانت لتروى لولا قراءتك؟

وعن
بحر ...more

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