Marias

Los Enamoramientos Marias Spanish edition

Javier Marías, the masterly Spanish novelist, follows the opposite policy and, even after he has filled a descriptive vacancy, continues to interview other candidates for the job. The rival formulations turn up one after another, in sub-clauses that offer everything from subtle qualification to flat contradiction. Here is the narrator of The Infatuations, Marías s new novel, contemplating the memory of Miguel and Luisa, the husband and wife she grew to think of as the Perfect Couple, if only on the thin basis of observing them have breakfast each morning in the same cafe: They became almost obligatory. No, that s the wrong word for something that gives one pleasure and a sense of peace. Perhaps they became a superstition; but, no, that s not it either. . . . "The last time I saw Miguel Desvern or Deverne was also the last time he saw his wife, Luisa. This was not only strange, but perhaps also unfair, since she was just that, his wife, and I was just a stranger. . . " Los enamoramientos, Marías' latest work, is a reflection on the state of infatuation, considered as something positive and even redeeming to the extent of justifying all: the most noble and selfless actions but also the largest excess and abuses. It is also a novel on the impossibility of ever knowing the truth, not even our own.