Ve benim de şaşırma sebebim tam da bu yokluk. Sadece uzun gözlemler – anlık çıkarımlar – söz sanatları ve karakterin gözleri olabilmek yetiyor bu eseri sevebilmek için. İlk sayfadan son sayfaya dek bir örgütün farkında oluyorsunuz, merakla bekliyorsunuz. Bu merak sizi sarıp sarmalıyor. Marias okurunu avucunun içine alıyor.. A lengthy section late in the novel focusses on the campaign in the Second World War against "careless talk" in Britain, where everyone was warned against revealing any information that might be of use to the enemy -- because you never knew who might be the enemy. So yeah, I suppose that if you write an actionless, multi-volume novel with a vulgarly high comma-to-period ratio and no actual events save a party and stuffy rich erudite people yakking, you must be consciously placing yourself in a specific European literary tradition, and inviting certain comparisons to some celebrated, endless plotlessness that has come before. So yes, to answer the question blazing in everyone's mind: if Marcel Proust were Spanish and writing a twenty-first-century spy novel, I suppose it might be at least vaguely like this.

The third story is a mystery involving the disappearance of a (real) Spanish Communist and the assassination of Deza's uncle during the Spanish Civil War. These events are also linked to the unexplained betrayal of his father in Franco Spain. Much is made of the connection with the James Bond figure of Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love, in which book there appear to be significant references to at least the first event. En el fondo sólo nos interesa e importa lo que compartimos, lo que traspasamos y transmitimos. Queremos sentirnos parte de una cadena siempre, cómo decir, víctimas y agentes de un inagotable contagio.” Y aunque yo me cuento entre aquellos que prefieren no contar, entre los que raramente hablan de lo que sienten, de lo que sintieron, de lo que hicieron o les hicieron o harán, no por ello estoy a salvo. Siempre hay alguien para el que somos transparentes, siempre hay alguien que nos cale, que intuya lo que somos y lo que somos capaces de hacer y de no hacer y lo que podríamos llegar a hacer, alguien capaz de traer al presente nuestro “rostro mañana”. "Los individuos llevan sus probabilidades en el interior de sus venas, y sólo es cuestión de tiempo, de tentaciones y de circunstancias que por fin las conduzcan a su cumplimiento"Nosotros mismos podríamos ser ese alguien para otros, ser uno de los elegidos, de los "intérpretes de personas" o "traductores de vidas" o "anticipadores de historias", y así evitar la traición futura, la puñalada en la espalda, saber lo que a lo mejor no querríamos saber pues en el fondo odiamos el conocimiento y la certidumbre, e intuimos que “esa luz suspicaz, recelosa, interpretativa, inconforme con las apariencias y con lo evidente y llano” pueda encubrirnos la superficie, lo simple, nublarnos la visión de lo que no tiene doblez ni secreto y así convertirnos en nuestro propio dolor y nuestra fiebre. “Nos aburren la protección y la prevención y la alerta, y a todos nos gusta arrojar el escudo lejos y marchar ligeros blandiendo la lanza como un adorno.”Es más, nos aterra el precipicio de la equivocación, la posibilidad de lo improbable, la responsabilidad de lo visto y errado, y entonces el don del conocer se trastoca una vez más en maldición. ¿Se puede conocer hasta ese punto? ¿Podemos estar seguros del afecto presente, de la traición futura? ¿Se puede cambiar, se puede ser mañana en el que no se es hoy? Jaime explores both options. He uses his novelist's gift, or "curse", as he puts it several times, comparing history and gossip to what can be gained from direct and honest confession. (Pedro Almodóvar once remarked that he thought he was a good filmmaker because he was a good confessor.) Marías is superb on the many ways in which we fail truth, our seemingly limitless power to forget suffering we have inflicted. Also at the dinner is Bertram Tupra, for whom Deza eventually goes to work (having passed the test). How can I not know today your face tomorrow, the face that is there already or is being forged beneath the face you show me or beneath the mask you are wearing, and which you will only show me when I am least expecting it ?Shakespeare ve Don Quixote'ye yazarın derinden bir ilgisi olması kitabı benim için ayrıca güzelleştirdi.

While these sentences are made, uniformly and metaphorically, of water, they differ from each other as they strive toward their ultimate destination. So, again, it's not prudent to treat each segment of their journey as representative of the whole. A waterfall is materially or definitionally different from a stream, or a river. There's little menace or sense of danger -- and what there is (Deza's impression that he is being followed, for example) remains, for now, fairly harmless. Fever and Spear is a meditative novel, with Deza (and also Wheeler) extemporising at considerable length on matters such as trust and silence and the dangers of any communication. Extremely hard to read, as every sentence is beautifully crafted but to the point of being over-written and elaborate, often piling on a series of repetitions; as an example (which could actually be referring to large parts of the book) siz izleniyor ve dinleniliyorsunuz. Farkında bile olmaksızın hem de.. Sizi dinleyen yakınlarınız da olabilir, sizi izleyen komşunuz da..BOMB Magazine has been publishing conversations between artists of all disciplines since 1981. BOMB’s founders—New York City artists and writers—decided to publish dialogues that reflected the way practitioners spoke about their work among themselves . Today, BOMB is a nonprofit, multi-platform publishing house that creates, disseminates, and preserves artist-generated content from interviews to artists’ essays to new literature. BOMB includes a quarterly print magazine, a daily online publication, and a digital archive of its previously published content from 1981 onward.

ciltte dramatik dönemeçler pek yok. Baş karakter, Peter Wheeler ve yine Oxford'da tanıştığı Toby Rylands hakkında yeni bilgiler öğrenirken İspanya İç Savaşı ve İkinci Dünya Savaşı dönemlerinde yaşanan çeşitli olaylara ilişkin tarihi bilgiler, yorumlar ve tabii ki Marias'ın ele almayı sevdiği temalar üzerine uzun tiradlar okuyoruz. Yine ihanet, insanları gerçekten tanımanın, sır tutmanın ve gerçeği bilmenin imkansızlığı, pişmanlık öne çıkan temalar. This last question is especially relevant, when you recognise that, even within the first part, there are different styles and subject matter. Javier Marias'ın ustalık eseri denilen seriyi yazarla tanışma kitabı olarak seçmediğim için mutluyum çünkü yarım bırakabilirdim. Yazarın üslubuna alışkın olmak önemli. Kesinlikle sabır isteyen bir metin, yazarın okuduğum tüm kitapları öyleydi gerçi. Among the most intriguing secrets are those surrounding the Spanish Civil War (and Wheeler's role there), a long-past conflict that, like World War II, still overshadows the present of these characters. Marías operated a small publishing house under the name of Reino de Redonda. He also wrote a weekly column in El País. An English version of his column "La Zona Fantasma" is published in the monthly magazine The Believer.Finally, there is the tale of Wheeler, the emeritus Oxford don, who, like a character out of Le Carre's Smiley's People, is an old hand in the British Secret Service. Wheeler also has some problems with name-stability. He, too, has had some vague involvement with the Spanish Civil War but on whose side and to accomplish what end? Unlike The Man of Feeling the novel is lengthy and so Marias’s complex prose which often turns in on itself does cross over into being unreadable. To fall silent, yes, silent, is the great ambition that no one achieves not even after death, and I least of all, for I have often told tales and even written reports, more than that, I look and I listen, although now I almost never ask questions. In this way, it resembles Haruki Murakami's "1Q84", which could be (and was) published either as one volume or three separate volumes (although as far as I'm aware, Marias' novel hasn't been published in a single volume, other than in Spanish). In this brilliant dark novel, Marías has taken a central philosophical concern and set it before us in a new light, at once magical and terrifying in its implications for what we most value: for love, for justice and for the belief that we are who we say we are, when we think we are being honest." - John Burnside, Scotland on Sunday

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale. The title comes from a comment half-way through made by Deza in an attempt to explain his father's betrayal. "How can I not know today your face tomorrow...?" he says. In other words: Isn't the real character of a person obvious long before he acts? Shouldn't one be able to see betrayal before any overt act to betray? One might assume therefore that this is the central theme that brings the four complex threads together.It may be all that is left if one cannot trust anyone. Then, one cannot give oneself over to anyone or anything, a painting included. Gathering facts by those removed from self-intrusion either through will or an absence of self will theoretically lead to an assessment of who people are and who they will be in the future. Their face tomorrow. The overall effect recalls the cerebral play of Borges, the dark humor of Pynchon, and the meditative lyricism of Proust." - Pedro Ponce, Review of Contemporary Fiction