‘The Infatuations’, libro del año según John Ashbery

Books of the Year

JOHN ASHBERY

As in years past, my favourite novel of those I read this year is one by Javier Marías,The Infatuations(HamishHamilton). This time the narrator is a woman, although there is also a character named Javier. As usual, a fiendishly complex little plot triggers wave after wave of achingly beautiful prose whose mood of ecstatic disquiet becomes addicting. Perhaps slightly less bristling than usual, his sentences often begin with a proposition that soon gets modified, an...