At the simplest level, Volume One was about a conversation between an old man and our protagonist, Jacques Deza. But of course, nothing in Marias' hands (or mind) is ever that simple. There are, let it be said, tangents. The Spanish Civil War, espionage, Deza's ex-wife, a mysterious, single drop of blood.Volume Two, at the simplest level, is about a night in a club, or more specifically, Deza's trip to the restroom. Deza is not going there to pee. Nor is his boss, the leader of an unnamed group who work in an unnamed building for anonymous clients. Deza and his colleagues have a gift for scrutiny. They observe people, and understand them, their tendencies and scruples, and predict behavior. Their job is:making frivolous bets and forecasts, looking and listening and interpreting and noticing, and taking notes and observing and selecting, inveigling, making connections, dressing things up, translating, telling stories and coming up with ideas and persuading others of those ideas, responding to and satisfying the insatiable, exhausting demand:'What else, what else do you see, what else did you see?' although sometimes there is no 'else' and you have to force your visions or perhaps forge them out of your own inventive powers and memory, which is to say with that infallible mixture which can either condemn or save people and which forces us to announce our prejudices or pre-judgements, or perhaps they are merely our pre-verdicts.But, back to the head. Deza does not find what he has been sent for; instead he is made to witness a peculiar act of violence, the rank exertion of brutal power. Once again there are tangents: the Spanish Civil War, a father's tale of justice, Deza's ex-wife, and, this time, a not so mysterious drop of blood. There is time for Deza to hum or sing The Streets of Laredo in a few languages and to call his ex-wife for a disquisition on Botox and whether it is proper etiquette to forego panties during menstruation. We are discussing fear and forgiveness, memory and forecast. It's a journey. I write this review unsure of where we are. Volume Three looms. Perhaps another drop of blood will explain it all or another disquisition will open up the secrets of my own heart. When I waken in the night, battered by these questions, I might reach for Your Face Tomorrow. Or something like it. I know where it is, where I laid it. It's just down the hall. But the hallway lengthens like an artful movie. And there are doors on both sides.
This was the first Javier Marias novel where I actively skimmed through sections; it's also the middle part of what I suspect will be his greatest achievement yet. Does that seem contradictory? Let me explain. Marias' prose tends towards long elaborations and digressions, with sentences spanning paragraphs, paragraphs spanning pages and parenthetical statements that take on a voluminous life of their own. In previous novels that I've read (The Man Of Feeling, All Souls, Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me) by Marias, the emphasis is more on character and reverie, making each clause, qualification and detour a natural part of the reading experience. This sequence of novels carries on with the same emphasis on characterisation, dialogue and interior narrative, but it has an added element of plot interest - Jaime Deza, the displaced Spanish academic of All Souls has now been recruited by some quasi-official covert intelligence operation. But it isn't just the elements of a spy thriller that make it harder to sit out the many ruminative passages here; with this set of novels it would seem that Marias, for all that his previous novels were literary masterpieces of the highest calibre, has finally decided to play for higher stakes and move beyond the more personal scale of his previous novels to confront a larger theme - violence itself, what motivates it, and whether it can ever be justified. All this gives the narrative a forward momentum that his previous novels didn't quite have; even here, he's taken his time to build the pace and pitch from the relatively more leisured first volume to the second, which has left me impatient to get on with the last volume. The stakes feel higher than ever before, the story cuts closer to the bone and the plot itself has enough suspence that for once, I feel I must eschew absorbing every detail so that I can absorb the whole faster; I hope, once I finish the third book, that I find the time some day to go back and properly study the passages I've sped through this time. I'm also eager to see if the the third volume fulfills the promise of this being the most significant literary achievement and statement yet by one of today's very finest novelists.
What do You think about Dance And Dream (2006)?
Ook hier gebeurt weer bijna niets, net als in het eerste deel van de trilogie. De hoofdpersoon werkt nu voor een soort geheime dienst, waar hij mensen moet beoordelen. Zij gaan een avond met een client naar een nachtclub, waar dan iets gebeurd met de Spanjaard uit het eerste deel. Die wordt redelijk gewelddadig behandeld. Waarom is niet duidelijk. Dit alles is in tien bladzijden te vertellen, maar de schrijver weidt weer enorm uit over van alles. Hij schrijft in een soort vrije associatie en komt via allerlei omwegen wel weer bij het originele vehaal terug. Maar dat kan lang duren. Vaak komt hij terug op de Spaanse Burgeroorlog en alle gewelddadigheden van die tijd. Het is heel leesbaar,maar ik weet nog steeds niet waar de schrijver echt naar toe wil. Misschien in het derde deel?
—Riet
Writing a review for this book is pretty silly; it really is the middle of a novel. You get the thrill neither of a beginning, nor of an ending; there's no cliffhanger as there was at the end of Fever and Spear. You can't read this without having read the first volume. That said, it retains all the strengths of that first volume: intelligent, funny, witty, affecting, and beautifully translated. The drawbacks here: the character this volume focuses on - Tupra, in the main - isn't as much fun as the Oxford dons that the first volume featured; and the thinking here is a little less original. Whereas the first volume seemed to be more of a critique of pomo nonsense, this volume sometimes indulges in it.
—Justin Evans
(segue)Nella seconda parte del romanzo non sorprendono più la ridondante e fascinosa prosa di Marías, la malia di alcune scene, l'incisività e l'eleganza del pensiero, non sorprendono più non perché siano a un tratto divenute scontate, no, lasciano ancora in stato semi-ipnotico e davanti alla bellezza mai ci si annoia, tuttavia dopo le quasi quattrocento pagine della prima parte e le oltre trecento della seconda già sappiamo di che pasta è fatto Marías e si avverte un filo di stanchezza.Ma è stanca l'opera o ero stanco io? (continua)
—pierlapo quimby
