Thus Bad Begins | 
so-soI recognize the brilliance and beauty of the writing here as a meditation on time and history and memory, but as a whole, this didn‘t really work for me. Instead of sinister and foreboding, I found it to be withholding. Instead of richly detailed, I found it discursive and repetitive. Also, so so much male gaze.
pickAn immersive, layered story set in Madrid in 1980, tracing the ripple effects of the Civil War on a movie director & his circle of friends. Quite male-centred, the men are interesting & powerful whereas Beatriz the director's wife is complex & well-drawn but is seen by the young narrator as passive & a sex object, which bothered me. Beautiful, melodious writing which flows like classical music once you get used to long sentences. #Spain
Tennis lessons for my husband and kids at a local club in Sitges. A g&t and good book for me! Still getting used to Javier Marias's beautiful but long sentences... #Spain
#LitsyPartyOfOne = Barcelona and some of the books I want to read as soon as possible. 75 pages to go. Does anyone else get impatient to finish a book even when it's good? š¤š·
#catchingup on #marchintoreading
2 - Judging by its Cover
I'll confess, I'm more inclined to pick up a book blind if it has a decent #goodreads rating and seems like it'll be scarce later on (so of course, #BarnesandNoble had stacks of it on display two weeks later).
pickYes! This digs a tunnel into marriage and the painful secrets that can be kept for decades. The writing feels effortless, interrogative and completely absorbing.
This book is so smooth to read--flows like water. I've never heard of the author but apparently he's huge overseas. It reminds me of a more masculine Ferrante, which doesn't sound that laudatory but it's supposed to be a compliment. š
This is the book I just got, which I am quite excited about. It's been on my radar since it came out last year, and it's even surpassing my expectations.
Addictive.
#7 #libfaves16 Now we get into a little fiction. Reviewed this here a few weeks ago. Here is a brief recap. The main drive of the book is a marriage during the Franco dictatorship and its consequences. People both suffered based on deceptions and self deceptions. Only time solves these problems, but time lived during these difficult years are not wasted. They are the light and the dark that makes up ones life and darkness often reveals the light.
pickFor Marias, the plot bookends the conversations and observations of his characters. The main drive of the book is a marriage during the Franco dictatorship and its consequences. People both suffered based on deceptions and self deceptions. Only time solves these problems, but time lived during these difficult years are not wasted. They are the light and the dark that makes up ones life and darkness often reveals the light.
...we can't spend our lives listening to rumours, still less acting in accordance with their many fluctuations. When you give that up, when you give up trying to know what you cannot know, perhaps, to paraphrase Shakespeare, perhaps that is when bad begins, but, on the other hand, worse remains behind."
...even in a situation in which the winners ruled absolutely and completely crushed the opposition or their scattered and battered remnants, it suited them to be at least partly on good terms with everyone or to have them all partly in their debt, or at least not to be seen by anyone as their bitter enemy. They know that any such remnant will, sooner or later, regroup and recover enough to reorganize itself and reconquer..."
Had my eyes on this one for a little; This was the last copy they had on the shelf, so I took the plunge.
