While the Women Are Sleeping

While the Women Are Sleeping - Javier Marías

This collection of Marias' short stories spans his writing career from his teenage years in 1968 through to 1998. Quite a stretch of time. While not essential, perhaps, this collection hangs together better than might be suspected and includes much to  savour.

All Souls

All Souls - Javier Marías


This is my second book by Marías in the past few months and I will be looking out for more. Different but sharing an interest in translation with my first taste of his writing Bad Nature , this is a variant on the English university novel. Given its name it seemed like an appropriate read for the Halloween season but  has more humour than horror, although horror is not absent.

The main theme of the book is time and the duality of experience. This duality meshes nicely with Marias' interest in translation. We have rivers with more than one name interwoven through the book, physically representing the movement of time and also the subjective nature of naming. The fact that Oxford is a hotbed of agents (and double, and even triple agents) is also mentioned. Everyone is seen to be playing games of deception and those who aren't are seen as suspect.

Bad Nature, or with Elvis in Mexico.

Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico - Javier Marias

Language is a dangerous commodity. How we use it can determine our fate. It is a vessel for memory. It can be used not just to decide what happens, but also what happened. So when it is decided that Elvis never went to Mexico to shoot some scenes from Fun in Acupulco, so it is. This however, threatens the very being of our narrator, for whom his time in Mexico with Elvis was a lifechanging experience.