top of page
Tim O'Brien

367. Javier Marías - The Infatuations


A library book by a writer I had never heard of; apparently a prominent modern Spanish novelist.

The narrator is a very verbose young Spanish woman; it could and probably should have been ½ in length. But the underlying concept is quite interesting: a man she knows by sight is murdered; she meets his widow and a friend who is helping out, falls in love with the friend, and post coitally overhears him discussing the death of the victim with another man.

She assumes the guy was murdered but her boyfriend tells her it was a quasi-suicide requested by his friend who had inoperable cancer and couldn’t cope with DIGNITAS. She half believes him.

At the end she approaches him and his new partner (the widow) in a restaurant with a view to telling the widow, but decides not to. So it is all left open.

Different, interesting, but over-wordy.


Comments


bottom of page