Javier Marìas

also i am very curious who people pictured dick dearlove as whilst reading

i did not know that, about his other novels being connected. well i knew about 'all souls' but not the others

thread making me think I shd read this + Machen & Gawsworth links, right?

Just read 'While the Women are Sleeping', his short story collection, because of this thread, as not feeling strong enough atm for a huge trilogy

Really enjoyed it, even if a couple of the stories left me a bit bewildered as to what actually happened.

He has this lovely urbane, witty, charming Spanish thing going on, rather like Alberto Manguel, and sometimes Borges. And a bit like Robert Louis Stevenson (ans the Spanish bit), who I'm pretty sure Borges, Manuel and Marias are big fans of.

Gawsworth MAY show up in a story in While the Women are Sleeping, btw

Gawsworth MAY show up in a story in While the Women are Sleeping, btw

Oh yeah, I just remembered that - through the window of the retail store, I think.

gawsworth is mentioned in all souls, which is proving to be easily the most genuine oxford novel i have yet encountered

All right, all right, I may have to give this guy another chance. Still have a copy of Dark Back of Time, maybe I will reread All Souls first.

Perfectly alright to read Dark Back first, I'd say. That was my first Marias, the one that hooked me.

Doesn't get mentioned much, but The Man Of Feeling is a splendid book. Less bound to digression, more Nabokovian.

All Souls has a scene in which (like A Heart So White, and Your Face Tomorrow too kind of) an interpreter makes up his own questions during an interrogation of some kind; also, like the latter, a disquisition on how the word 'eavesdrop' doesn't exist in Spanish

oh to have time to reread these

Vaster than empires and more slow

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-worldly-digressions-of-javier-marias