“I did not want to know but I have since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn’t a girl any more and hadn’t long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father’s gun at her heart, her fa...
My first clue to the structure of this novel, or the first one that I twigged to, was the recurrent untied shoelace. Untied shoelaces kept popping up, for no apparent reason. What is the significance of untied shoelaces that appear on pages 38, 80, 88, 112, 113, 131, 132, 136, 230, 238? I still d...
Ah, Javier, you wonderful bastard—so well-read, so capable an author, so Marías-ish—so capable of doing what you write about (I’ll come back to that).In Written Lives, Marías paints brief portraits of many well-known authors, weaving in information that is less well-known, creating wonderful stories...
This is yet another brilliant novel by Javier Marías. I'm not going to pretend to any kind of objectivity; he has become one of my favorite writers in a very short time. In this short, intricately crafted novel, Marías explores the intersection between love and dreams. Is the true experience of love...
First, I recommending that you read Mike Puma's review, since he provides such a thoughtful and comprehensive picture of this novel. Mike's accomplishment is all the more impressive because of the unique style and approach Marías takes in this novel. Is he writing a memoir or a novel? Is he providin...
There are so many layers to this book. You have to be willing to give it time, especially in the first third or so, when Marías writes long, intricate, sentences that fold back on themselves, with parentheses within parentheses. Through this style, Marías presents the thoughts and interpretations of...
It's probably a 5 star novel. I enjoyed it very much, just not quite as much as the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, or All Souls or Dark Back of Time. And I found it a little bit irritating, the way he kept using the phrase "dark back of time," in this novel. I know that he is always a bit self-referent...
Moja opinia o książce, to zarazem odpowiedź na opinię Aldi. Autor opowiada w niej o pobycie w delegacji hiszpańskiego lektora w Oxfordzie. W świadku naukoznawców z pozoru jest tylko nudnie. Zdarzają się wysokie obiady ze studentami, gdzie przypadkowo, lub nie, umieszcza się kogoś obok nudnego naukow...
A strange, if uneven, collection of short stories, probably best serving the interests of the Marías aficionado. This is not the volume I’d recommend to someone new to the author; I’m reluctant to recommend it to anyone who is familiar with the author. Some creepy mofos inhabit the mind of Señor Ma...
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