Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear
Author: Javier Marias
Year: 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=490282005
MANY PUBLISHERS TODAY are more likely to talk about "the bottom line" than literary merit. "Personally," one such may say, "I loved the book, but I can’t see how to get our sales team behind it. So, sorry." This being so, Chatto & Windus are to be commended for bringing out Fever and Spear, the first volume of "a novel in parts".
Marias demands the reader’s close attention and patience, like Henry James or Proust. You find yourself faced with paragraphs that may be a couple of pages long, with dialogues that turn into monologues, with long passages of analysis and refinement of meaning. You are threatened with boredom. And then you are drawn in. You find there is so much to relish, so many observations that require you to pause and ponder. You are dazzled by the author’s intelligence and understanding of human nature. You don’t even worry that the narrative doesn’t seem to be advancing, or that very often you are being offered an essay rather than a story.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1478815,00.html
Posted in snacks | Permalink