SOURCE: Greenland, Colin. “Change of Life.” New Statesman 112, no. 2898 (10 October 1986): 28-9.

In the following excerpt, Greenland offers a mixed review of Continent.

Jim Crace steps aside from history and geography in Continent, a book of seven stories from an imaginary and unnamed seventh continent (counting Eurasia, I suppose, as one). The world is our own, now; most of the stories centre on conflicts between local traditions actual and assumed, and invasive modernity from Europe and America. An ageing calligrapher is subjected to the depredations of ignorant and extravagant collectors; a sophisticated young biologist prepares to inherit his father's business, lucratively exploiting rural superstition; a Canadian visitor, a jogger, is made to run a race against the finest horseman in the valley for the approval of the old men. Crace's cool and measured diction, his evocative restraint, his keen sense of life and death invisibly and inflexibly awarded, all...