Continente

by Jim Crace

To those who say there's nothing new to be written or read, Jim Crace has responded. For this provocative collection of short stories, Crace created a whole new continent. Unnamed and unspecified, the continent nevertheless resonates with characters, developments, contradictions and examinations of the path and power of progress. In one story electricity comes to a country in the form of a giant fan; in another a government agent out to exploit a primitive people discovers the beauty of traditional life. The book, which won a Whitbread Prize, takes us to a new world in a journey that causes us look more closely at our own.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Literary Fiction, Fantasy, British Literature, Novels

140 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

James "Jim" Crace is an award-winning English writer. His novel Quarantine, won the Whitbread Novel award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Harvest won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.

In 1986 Crace published Continent. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.

Despite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is how treasure is unearthed.

I'm in Florida visiting family. I find a used book store in Fort Myers; a shotgun unit in a dilapidated strip mall wedged between a nail salon and a failing pizzaria. The store is mostly pulp romance paperbacks, but there is a slim selection of "Fiction" (apparently a catch-all for everything not romance) - a single shelf where used books are stacked horizontally to economize space. There's a Barth book I don't have wedged in the middle of a stack; my clumsiness retrieving it causes a cascade of books to hit the floor. One of these is a small book that lands face down - my eyes are drawn to a quote on the book's back by author John Hawkes: "Stunning, powerful and original." I also see Whitbread Prize. I don't read further; it comes along with the Barth.

And the book is a winner. I can't/won't say a thing about its subject matter - that is part of the beauty of the experience - the reader should be allowed to witness the excitement of understanding as the seven tales unfold. The writing is stunning (tip o' the hat, Hawkes) but I was equally impressed by the subject matter, Crace disproving the adage that there is nothing new under the sun.

If you read this, please do yourself the favor of not reading the book blurb (or anything on GR about the book) - open to the first page and be reminded anew the power and excitement of unearthing BURIED treasures.

[Hugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this first book. Jim Crace is a versatile writer - I have read five of his books and they are all very different. In this one he imagines a hybrid, mostly third world continent, much of which resembles Africa but which also has elements that are more South American and there is possibly a bit of Asia there too.

The setting is the only tangible link between the seven short stories that comprise this novella. The stories vary in tone and content, which makes it difficult to grasp the whole and the unifying themes.

It is largely about the nature of progress and civilisation, and what is lost in its acquisition. He explores many elements of less developed societies and the ways in which they cope with the new, finding humour in places and darker elements in others.

An interesting read but probably not his best work.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why not start from beginning? This is my first meeting with Jim Crace so I decided to start with his first novel. Continent is collection of seven stories placed on made up seventh continent. It's place in early stages of civilization where influence of western cultures is just setting in so as reacquiring theme we have clash of old and new ways. Superstition vs technology, tradition vs progress and in this fight Crace doesn't remain neutral.

Overall short and sweet book that can be completed under two hours of reading.I can't wait to see other of his work.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continent is a series of vaguely linked ethnographic-leaning tales that for whatever reason was marketed as a novel (and actually won a Whitbread Award for First Novel in 1986). The links are primarily geographical, as the stories are all based in various locales on an unnamed continent resembling Africa. Echoes of Borges resound, as do the closer-in-time (only a few years later) stories of Patricia Eakins. Crace's world resides a little closer to realism, though. Mention is made of countries in Europe and places in North America, for example. But the titular continent and the activities of its denizens remain just obscure and mysterious enough to lend a haze of unreality to the book. Probably more like a 3.5 star read for me, for whatever that's worth, but I feel generous.

(Also, John Hawkes blurbed it as 'stunning, powerful, and original' so stuff that in your postmodern pipe and take a deep toke of it.)

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

My copy of Continent contains the following inscription:

For Simon,
Christmas 1986
All the best for the
New Year & any new
continents you may
take on-

There's a signature below it, but it's incomprehensible. The copy in question is a hardback published by William Heinemann in London in 1986, apparently a first edition - sold for £4.95 net, with a sticker saying "you can afford the journey!" put on a cover - (someone - Simon? Simon's giver? - removed it from this copy. How far have we gone - can you imagine a brand new hardcover being sold at a bookstore with the retail price of five quid?

I wondered about Simon. What kind of a person was he? The inscription implied him to be a traveler, and one who has journeyed beyond his native continent. Did he enjoy the book? This isn't a novel, but a collection of seven stories set in an unnamed, fictitious seventh continent, where old tradition clashes with unavoidable progress. Did Simon take the book with him on one of his journeys? That would make the book a traveler as well. How did it slip from his hands, and end up in mine? What has the book seen? Where has it been?

These are all questions which have been on my mind as I was reading Continent, Jim Crace's debut work. Each of his novel is very different from the other - he's not a writer afraid of experimenting and trying new things, and it paid off: Continent has won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, and his later historical novels Quarantine and Harvest have both been nominated for the Booker Prize - Britain's finest. He's an accomplished and skilled writer, and Continent is no exception - the opening story, Talking Skull, a freshly educated young man struggles with defining his future: should he embrace his education and spread ideas and wisdom, or continue to feed on the superstitions of the local, uneducated population and make a fortune - like his father? Similarly, in another story, a village scribe struggles to stay true to his art in the face of profit and greed coming from the outsiders who came to seek him for their own gains. The dreamlike continent created by Crace echoes the struggles of our own world - corruption, colonialism, and the erosion of old cultures by the new. I'm glad that I read it and I'm pretty sure that Simon appreciated it too, wherever he might be now.

[Vanja Šušnjar Čanković · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bome, paf! Ovo je jedna od rijetkih knjiga koja vas ostavi potpuno zatečene, jer vam postavi toliko pitanja o kojima niste sigurni ni da želite razmišljati. I zaista ne znam šta da napišem u ovoj fazi osim onoga što ćete moći pročitati i na poleđini knjige u Laguninom izdanju. Ali jednu stvar moram izdvojiti, budući da i sama često razmišljam o tome. Može li se danas uopšte napisati, samim tim i pročitati, nešto sasvim novo i originalno ili makar na drugačiji način? E pa, može. I da, upravo ovo, između ostalog, piše na koricama, ali prvi put da to zaista ima smisla. Obično se na tim mjestima pišu hvalospjevi koji će prodati knjigu, a koji često nemaju veze s pameću. Ovo je jedna ozbiljna kritika poretka stvari u savremenim civilizacijama, surova i sablasna, pomalo naivnih i definitivno neprilagođenih likova, veoma bogatog i zadivljujućeg stila pisanja koji vam uskomeša i misli i maštu i čula.

[Jay Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book when it first came out, in 1986, as part of my research into "what makes a good writer". It features perfectly competent short stories, but despite all the publisher's claims to the work's originality, there were not, as far as I can recall, any huge surprises or twists and turns that could not be foreseen. It reminded me of one of those chairs or cabinets that a journeyman was required to produce in order to obtain membership of a guild: proof of the author's mastery of the various techniques necessary to acquire the status of craftsman. Writing not out of place in Granta or a myriad other gatekeeper journals protecting the reading public from independent thought about aesthetic taste and moral judgement.



Addendum: Let me confess, too, to being underwhelmed by Crace's other books that I have read, so it's perhaps my aversion to his style and subject matter that renders him uninteresting.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 2nd Crace and another excellent novel. This one consists of 7 tales set in an unnamed fictious 7th continent reminiscent of parts of Africa, rural Europe and South America.

I'm definitely going to be reading more of his work

[Miloš Kostić · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kontinent je zbirka priča sa zajedničkom idejom i čija se radnja dešava na imaginarnom "sedmom" kontinentu koji kao da je tek otkriven od strane civilizovanog sveta. Poređenje sa Afrikom se samo nameće ali to ipak nije Afrika već nešto još starije. To su prvi, početni koraci društva u kome tek počinje da se šire obrazovanje, elektrifikacija, zamiru stari zanati, stara sujeverja i običaji, stranci istražuju zaostala plemena, širi se korupcija i strahovlada... Ukratko, tranzicija. Na samom početku Krejs navodi citat koji koji je retko prikladan: "Daleko, daleko, postoji sedmi kontinent – sedam naroda, sedam gospodara, sedam mora. A njihov posao su trgovina i sujeverje. " (Pikletije, Istorija, IV, 3.) Neko bi možda očekivao da probleme u rajski vrt donose stranci ali ovde je jasno da je Krejs na strani civilizovanosti kao, uostalom, i u svim ostalim njegovim knjigama koje sam pročitao. Zato ga i toliko volim, između ostalog. Jezik je čist, priče su jednostavne, u nekim trenucima sam imao utisak da su to samo skice, ali to ništa ne umanjuje, naprotiv. Upečatljivo delo. Možda ovo nije najbolja knjiga da se počne s Krejsom ali svakako zaslužuje sve moje preporuke jer iako je prvo njegovo delo, on je u njemu već bio na svom prepoznatljivom vrhunskom nivou.

Naišao sam na jedan dugačak intervju u kome u jednom delu autor opisuje svoje književne početke i nastanak ovog dela. Vrlo mi je zanimljiv (on je u stvari osnovni razlog što sam uopšte počeo ovaj komentar) pa ću, kao zaključak, preneti taj deo:

"As I said, when those first few stories were published, I got approached by several agents and publishers. They were all posh toffs from London as far as I was concerned. But one, a publisher called David Godwin, made the trek up to Birmingham to see me. He picked up my then young son, Tom, and said, What a pretty kid! That was totally persuasive. David—who is now my agent—offered me a book contract. And so I sat down and started writing this piece of realist political fiction, set in a suburb not a lot different from the Birmingham suburb of Moseley, which is where I lived then and am still living now. It was garbage. It was a novel that my seventeen-year-old self would have wanted to write, but I was almost forty by then and I couldn’t see what the next sentence should be, let alone the next paragraph, let alone what the rest of the book might be about. I was forcing this thing forward and it was appalling. David Godwin would occasionally phone up and say, How’s the novel going, old chap? and I would say, It’s inching forward. But it wasn’t inching forward at all. It was dying on its legs.

I was doing some reviewing as well at the time, and I read a novel called In Evil Hour by Gabriel García Márquez—and others by him at the same time. I thought, This is great, but I don’t admire it. Why don’t I admire it? Because when I’m down at the pub, I’m bullshitting like this all the time. I’m making stuff up, not trying to hold a mirror up to the world—I’m just making stuff up for the sake of it, and that’s all that Gabriel García Márquez is doing. I could do this in my sleep, I thought, I’m going to give it a try. So I shelved the social realism and sat down and wrote Continent. It was exactly the kind of book that my seventeen-year-old self would sneer at: rhythmic prose, moralistic, bourgeois fiction. Exactly the kind of stuff I didn’t want to write, but I realized at once that I had found my voice. I had no other voice. I had to play the cards that I’d been dealt.

As soon as I’d started on the first story of Continent, not only could I see what the next story was, or what that book could be, I knew what my next four books were. The novels stretched ahead, that’s the truth of the matter, as soon as I’d reconciled myself to being a fabulist rather than a political realist. I sit here now and I know exactly what my next two books will be."

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 This was Crace's first book, a book of short stories that surprisingly won the Whitebread award for first fiction. Surprising because the award went to a book of short stories. These are stories that take place in a made up place, said to be the sixth continent or is it? Craces explores societies coming up against the old superstitions faced with new scientific progress. Much that happens everywhere, everyday. His stories explore the ambiguity of changes and progress on the people and this world.

I liked them, I like the way he writes. Very clear and concise, easy to follow. The stories are often an exaggeration of our most hidden fears. How things and people that are different, are looked on with suspicion. How we many times embrace the old, because it is familiar, even when it is not working. Good collection of stories.

[Athanasia ♥︎ · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh...aha...okay.

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of seven short stories that all take place on a fictitious seventh continent. Things are a little different in this part of the world but not so much that the book could be called a work of fantasy. First book written by Crace - one I did not enjoy as much as some of his other books. Creative writing for sure but for some reason it did not grab me.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel fortunate this was not my first Jim Crace book, else I would never have been able to enjoy his other books - The Pesthouse, Quarantine, Being Dead, The Gift of Stones - as I would have concluded this author has no soul for writing. Strangely, after reading the Into to this book, I am having a hard time balancing his attitude toward fiction writing with the books he writes, save this one.
Another reviewer said this is a Granta book, and I totally understood their attitude. It has that icky, privileged feel, that overly polished (to give it the right edge) subtext. There is little to like here. Sort of a condescending admiration of provincial life from the perspective of someone who has never had to want, sacrifice, care about hardship, or really think about choices. Admiring poverty but removed from its effects, maybe? OK, that might be more about how Crace's Intro makes me feel than how the book did. I just didn't feel any sense of difference or otherness in the stories. Simple this, common that, regular people doing regular things. Hard to see any sense of the fantastic - 7th continent! - in any of this. Might it be it says a lot about how poorly panels choose award-winning books? Huh.
Skip this one.
John Crowley does this kind of thing better by leaps and bounds (Little, Big and Engine Summer come to mind, though they are altogether not the same either).

[LeastTorque · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok so I love this author but was still surprised at the quality of his first work. His trick of keeping time and place mysterious works perfectly here to head preconceptions off at the pass. The themes of future works are very much in evidence.

I felt not just transported but mutated by these fables of modernity vs tradition.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a letdown after the wonderful Quarantine.

My expectations were perhaps not set correctly. The blurb on the back of the book says:
Jim Crace's internationally acclaimed first book explores the tribes and communities, conflicts and superstitions, flora and fauna of a wholly spellbinding place: an imaginary seventh continent.

For some reason, I was expecting something more magical, more mysterious. Something like, I don't know, rivers made up of rolling rocks. The imaginary seventh continent (wait, aren't there seven real continents?) is instead rather ordinary.

[Old Man JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Crace is unique and, as far as I can tell, in a class by himself. He writes some of the most original and imaginative stories I've read. The extent of his imagination is in a realm that is usually reserved for sci-fi/fantasy but his books never seem to quite reach that classification. This book is a great example. This is a collection of related short stories that are set in an imaginary continent. Each of the stories is a great read individually but cumulatively they make a fantastic book.

[Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure I totally "get it" with this collection of short stories but there is a certain thread of irony that runs through them all. Crace is a good story-teller but I'm not sure I would return to this for a second reading. I much prefer his later works "A Gift of Stones" and "Harvest".

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a feeling that I'm not going to remember any of these stories, so I'm including their descriptions below.

• Lowdo, a rural boy at the University, ambivalent about his father and his father’s herd of freemartins, half-male/half-female cows whose “milk” is eagerly sought as an aphrodisiac.

• A mistakenly arrested “political” prisoner, his simple-minded sister, and the soldier for whom she had an unswerving affection.

• The teacher from the city who jogs and is challenged to a race by the local horseman hero.

• An elderly daughter trying to tease out the meaning of her anthropologist father, her cold and clever mother, and a long-ago native tribe where fertile females were in estrus only once a year — and all at the same time.

• An aged calligrapher who, at the end of his life, becomes the darling of art collectors in faraway America and draws the attention of government ministers.

• The remote village where a busybody takes credit for getting the government to agree to bring electricity in, and then goes to great lengths to prepare for the moment the switch is turned on.

• A lonely, insomnia-wracked, increasingly crazy company agent in a cabin on a mountaintop, sifting through stones for valuable ore.

[Pádraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable little thing, shards of stories of a seventh continent that never was. Brief, touching, with a confident writing voice that knows what to include and, more importantly, what to leave out. Most of them end too soon, as all the best stories do.

At times it reminded me of the less meta Borges stories, at others of Mackenzie. Less mysticism than an understanding that the world is magical, though only some people have worked this out.

The first two stories were good, but it was in the third, 'Cross-country', about a child on horseback racing a teacher on foot, that I started to realise I was reading something special. Crace, with seemingly so little effort, evokes the feeling of the village dynamics, how that environment shapes the minds of its inhabitants.

Other highlights are 'Sins and Virtues', almost a fable of a calligrapher and sign-writer whose work becomes famous overseas, collectors buying up whole shopfronts and government ministers requesting new work, though his own spark of creativity is long gone. And the final story, 'The Prospect from the Silver Hill', is extraordinary, concerning a company agent of a mining survey who starts talking to the dirt and the rocks and the gems and the silver. He must be mad, say the workers. He must be lonely, says his mother. He must be hiding something, say the bosses. William Blake said that everything that lives is holy, but he didn't go far enough. Feel the stones under your feet. In their worn marks there is a world that blazes with light, if you would but let it in.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seven stories for seven continents, perhaps – but not the familiar ones.

If the publishers hadn’t banged on about Jim Crace’s “entirely imaginary realm” all over the cover, the effect would have been more subtle, since the stories could easily have been accommodated within the known world. The fact that they are not quite is intriguing and mildly unsettling. Given the author’s stated dislike for research, a cynic might suggest that imaginary realms obviate the need for any...but not I, of course. Many, if not all, the stories explore the impact of the outside world on indigenous cultures which is, as expected, destructive – even if it is only a well-meaning Canadian runner outracing a local lad on a horse where “all the young men of the mountains rode horses.” Or another young man, educated at a foreign university, uncertain of his status and his future: “What must I do, fellow students? Decay here by the light of a thousand oil lamps? Or cast off my inheritance...put my faith in science and modernity?” A similar conundrum faces the villagers in Jim Crace’s later novel Harvest, as enclosures shut down their ancient way of life. An interesting and original collection - though perhaps a little too low-key to have any very great impact.

[Ron Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

My appreciation for what this book is doing -- and how well it is written -- is tempered a little bit by unease about why it's necessary to invent a continent whose nations and peoples enact the range of aspirations, social dislocations, and other challenges one expects from developing countries, given that there are so many real-world examples of such cultures and people.

Maybe it makes sense to look at characters in these situations without the preconceptions a reader might bring to real-world settings and nations and politics. That makes a bit of sense in the same way that science fiction narratives that tackle issues identifiable from the real world do. And it's odd that I seem not to be considering Continent to be science fiction itself; it probably technically is, at least by the standards I usually apply. (I think the book is spiritually closer to Ursula LeGuin, and maybe Samuel Delany's Neveryona books, than it is to Kafka's indeterminate Eastern Europe or Amerika, or Jorge Luis Borges' invented lands.)

[Magnus Stanke · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I'm not a great fan of short stories per se I picked up this collection purely based on my liking of Jim Grace's style, and I wasn't disappointed. At less than 200 pages it's a fast read, and although it's his first book, his characteristic dry tone is fully developed here.
As far as I can tell the stories are all allegories about the clash between modernity (some might call it globalisation in hindsight; in the mid 80s the term wasn't really in use that much) and the 'old' world, an unnamed country (countries?) that dream(s) of technology and gets invariably disappointed when the wished for thing arrives.

Not exactly new or original in content, but you dig his style than you won't go wrong

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Collection of seven short stories that all take place on a fictitious seventh continent. Things are a little different in this part of the world. Elements of this book still come back to me, like the character that attempts to stop his electric meter from spinning by shutting off items in his house. He doesn't realize what a difficult task this is until he attempts it. Think about it: You shut off all the lights and other obvious items, but then there's the hot water heater, the digital clock on the microwave. The Character decides that it's easier to go in the other direction , so he overloads the power grid achieving a blurred spinning of the meter indicator until it disintegrates.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

(I wrote a paragraph about half an hour ago and have no idea where it went. Sometimes I'm writing a review and it turns out to be a comment, sometimes a comment and it turns out to be a review. Sometimes is just vanishes.)

Basically, I said that it is an okay book. I would not refer to it again. It kind of dangled with nothing to say. I read it on Palouki Beach, Amaliada, Greece, but I don't recommend it for the beach, especially in Greece. It's a little dull, but I did finish it and felt relieved. I suggested that Crace try his hand at noire thrillers. Maybe science fiction. Not autobiography however since he is just not that interesting.

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crace is a genius. This is not his best book, not by a long shot. A lot of people think "Quarantine," his fantasy of Jesus's forty days in the desert, is his masterpiece, but I'm partial to "Being Dead" and "Harvest." Nonetheless, all three are quite a bit better than "Continent," which seems rather aimless and doesn't have the explosive language for which he's now famous. It's pretty dull, actually. Please don't read this one first because it might turn you off to one of the greatest prose stylists of the last fifty years.

[Scotchneat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Crace's first stories. I really enjoyed Pest House, so I checked this one out.

This is near fantasy - i.e. the world is not that far off of realworld. You can see some of the maturity that he will develop in his future writing.

Not a recommend to buy, but if you like short stories, maybe a good library book.

[Mark Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag. There are a couple of stories that rank with the best Crace has done. Many of the stories lack focus and are less engaging.
Along with his novels the stories have recurring themes of rural v urban, outsiders joining an isolated community, and the leverage that people try to exert over others.

[rachy · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Continent’ is a succinct, cohesive collection of short stories from writer Jim Crace. This is the first work of Crace’s I’ve read and though I didn’t fall in love with this collection, it was impressive enough that I’m definitely interested in reading more of his work.

A rather short collection at only 7 stories and 140 pages, ‘Continent’ holds faithfully to it’s themes about community, modernity and humanity’s strive and struggle for progress. These comprise the main virtues of the collection. It’s more and more uncommon to find short story collections that are as well thought through as ‘Continent’ and it definitely contributes to the overall enjoyment of reading it. All of the stories feel similar in theme and setting, but are still different enough to stand apart from one another. The length of the stories also gives more than enough time to get into each one, but aren’t so long that they feel dragging. The first three stories were definite highlights for me. The initial story is one of the most interesting reads. It constantly diverged from what I thought it was going to do in a delightful and surprising fashion that kept me constantly engaged.

Some of the later stories in this collection were just average. It’s hard to dislike them too much as they’re still well written and in keeping with the same feeling as the others, so they still feel like a nice continuation of a journey even if that particular stop wasn’t great. My only other criticism is that sometimes the setting is ambiguous in an odd way. A lot of these stories imply some kind of developing state in certain spaces that can feel very African, Asian or South American, but don’t fully commit to this. I can see how someone could see this as lazy or maybe as a cheap ploy to get out of fully exploring these spaces/cultures and giving them the research they deserve. I understand though that is not what he is trying to do in this collection, and using ambiguity to bypass these landmines is maybe necessary for the collection to exist in the form it does. This ambiguity however can sometimes leave some of the stories or characters feeling a little lacking. It feels like there are depths we could yet plumb, but aren’t afforded the chance to.

Overall I felt there was some really great stories in this collection with writing that was often brilliant and only occasionally convoluted. None of the stories in this collection were particularly poor either, which is an impressive feat in any short story collection. If you’re looking for nicely thematically linked collection that’s an interesting and not too taxing read, ‘Continent’ would definitely be a fine enough choice.

[tinalouisereadsbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a series of seven short stories set in a seventh continent. I did read the book very quickly and I feel that had it not have been short stories then I may have given up.

I tried to think about the stories and what is the connection with then to the number seven. At one point I thought maybe that each story was connected to one of the deadly sins. Most of the stories I could match a sin to it, but then not for all of them. For example the sin greed I would have matched to the first story Talking Skull. Lust was matched to On Heat and either Pride or Envy was matched to Cross County. I then thought about the stories again and I came to the conclusion that they are no more than modern faerie tales in a ‘Grimm’ style.

The first story Talking Skull was no more than a farmer with a magic herd who produced a magic milk which he sold to the villagers. However the milk was not really magic. The second story The World with One Eye Shut was no more than the village girl who is taken advantage of by a soldier and when her brother trys to protect her, is thrown into a prison. My favourite story was Cross County where again you have the village young man who is very envious of a new comer who like running. So a challenge is set up where the villager will race the newcomer, but he will ride his horse and the newcomer will be on foot. This to me was just like the Hare and the tortoise. Guess who wins !. I have to say also I hadn’t got a clue with the final story and didn’t understand it all.

I didn’t really enjoy the book that much although I did like some of the stories.

I have read this book for this months book group.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is for my own notes, so pardon my less than thorough critique.

This is a collection of 7 short stories that take place on a fictional continent in our world. No supernatural phenomena, but plenty of superstition. These stories reflect conflicts we all encounter, from children who go to the city to be educated, then come back with disdain for their hometowns, to exploitation and hubris. There wasn't much connection between the stories, and the second one completely lost me. These stories could have easily taken place on an island nation, rather than an entire continent. I also didn't understand why there was the same map at the beginning of each chapter, unless I missed something on the map (I read in Kindle Paperwhite so maybe some details were lost). Overall it's a fast read with some good discussion points, but it contains nothing spectacular.