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Your Face Tomorrow, Volume Two: Dance and Dream (New Directions Paperbook) |
Author: Javier Marias
Published: 2008-05-27 |
List price: $15.95
Our price: $8.45
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As of: January 07th, 2009 06:44:08 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Marias' magnum opus - an experiential spy novel
The "Your Face Tomorrow" trilogy is Javier Marias' magnum opus and quite possibly the reason for a potential Nobel Prize in the near future. Its style is experiential, at times employing stream-of-consciousness techniques.
Both of the two novels currently available in English (part three is due in 2009) are centered around a single event; in this case a visit to a night club. Marias cleverly uses flashbacks and foreshadowing to weave together the various levels of narrative. Marias fans will also recognise strands from earlier books, although it can be appreciated without any further reading (however it is recommended to read part one).
Jacques Deza, a Spaniard living in London, is gifted with the most incredible powers of observation which he puts to use working for an unnamed fraction of the English secret service. As time goes by, he begins to realise the impact of his analyses on the lives of others, which culminates in a choice between life and death in the night club scene.
In short, this is a highly eclectic combination of genres and styles - imagine Proust writing an existentialist spy novel in the 21st century. Javier's epic sentences can drag on for pages, but they are so incredibly precise that no word is ever superfluous. If you shy away from lengthy sentences, start with one of his earlier books - All Souls is recommended. Otherwise, give it some time and you will find yourself churning through this book - his most mature and ambitious to date.
I'm hooked
I can't believe I'll have to wait at least two years for the third volume. Just like Fever and Spear, the sequel ended in a crescendo of questions, flashbacks, cliffhangers and teases. Marias is an author that takes some getting used to but once you do, once you stop thinking about what happens next and simply take in each of the anecdotes and flashbacks and slowly-revealed plot points as they come, you will be hooked. I always end up describing reading Marias as slowly sipping a strong liquor. I hope that doesn't sound pretentious because it's the comparison I keep coming back to. If you haven't read Marias before, I would recommend starting with his short novel, The Man of Feeling, or with the short stories. Come back later for Your Face Tomorrow because it is definitely a masterpiece.
 Life is too short for unreadable books
The October 2006 book for my reading club: nearly 300 pages of a writer who is considered as a serious candidate to be a future Nobel Prize winner. But I was not impressed, it even irritated me (something that seldomly happens with books): pompous style, unclear contents, long sentences that just list events/things/persons. I thought that the problem might be in the translation, but when I tried the Spanish version it was just as awful. And since life is too short for unreadable books I stopped after 2 attempts and 67 pages (which meant that I gave it a serious try).
If you are serious about good literature
...then Marias is worth the time and effort. Perhaps one should not begin with Your Face Tomorrow. A Heart so White might be a better place to start. But as the next installment in the growing Marias body of work, Your Face Tomorrow shows that we are in the presence of something serious and enduring. Not for those seeking easy adventure. Marias demands that you think. He requires an openness to what a novel, or indeed, (why not?) an adventure might be. While the Tu rostro series has yet to be concluded, and while I have no idea where Marias is heading with it, I trust that, as with all of his previous work, it will have been worth the long, interesting, curious journey.
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