Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí

by Javier Marías

Una intensa narración sobre asuntos que nos atañen a todos: sobre el ocultamiento, los hechos y las intenciones; sobre el actuar sin saber y la voluntad que casi nunca se cumple; sobre la negación de las personas que una vez quisimos y el olvido y la indecisión; sobre la despedida, y también sobre el engaño.

La hechizante primera frase de esta novela ya dice mucho, quizá demasiado: «Nadie piensa nunca que pueda ir a encontrarse con una muerta entre los brazos y que ya no verá más su rostro cuyo nombre recuerda».

Esto es lo que ocurre al narrador, Víctor Francés, guionista de televisión y «negro» o «escritor fantasma», encargado de redactar los discursos de la gente importante e ignorante. Recientemente divorciado, es invitado a cenar a su casa por Marta Téllez, mujer casada cuyo marido está de viaje y madre de un niño de dos años. Tras la cena galante, el hombre y la mujer pasan al dormitorio donde, «aún medio vestidos y medio desvestidos», ella empieza a sentirse mal hasta que agoniza y muere en una escena sobrecogedora.

Esa infidelidad no consumada se convierte así en una especie de «encantamiento», con problemas bien reales e inmediatos: qué hacer con el cadáver, avisar o no avisar, qué hacer respecto al marido, qué hacer con el niño dormido, qué diferencia hay entre la vida y la muerte.

Genres: Fiction, Spanish Literature, Spain, Contemporary, Novels, Literary Fiction, Literature

359 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Javier Marías was a Spanish novelist, translator, and columnist. His work has been translated into 42 languages. Born in Madrid, his father was the philosopher Julián Marías, who was briefly imprisoned and then banned from teaching for opposing Franco. Parts of his childhood were spent in the United States, where his father taught at various institutions, including Yale University and Wellesley College. His mother died when Javier was 26 years old. He was educated at the Colegio Estudio in Madrid.

Marías began writing in earnest at an early age. "The Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga", one of the short stories in While the Women are Sleeping (2010), was written when he was just 14. He wrote his first novel, "Los dominios del lobo" (The Dominions of the Wolf), at age 17, after running away to Paris.

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.

In 1997 Marías won the Nelly Sachs Prize.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Tomorrow in the battle think on me, And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die!” William Shakespeare – Richard III
The main character becomes an involuntary witness of death in the very unusual circumstances… And the image of death starts haunting him… Death and fear… And the fear of death…
And at the cemetery in the epitaph on a tombstone he meets the impersonation of death…

“None that speak of me know me and when they do speak, they slander me; those who know me keep silent and in their silence do not defend me; thus, all speak ill of me until they meet me, but when they meet me they find rest, and they bring me salvation, for I never rest.”

One dies and one carries mysteries of one’s life away forever… But the secrets that surrounded one’s life still remain… And others might try to find them…
One can endeavour to choose one’s destiny but one can’t choose one’s doom… And the vicissitudes of life and death are all around…

…running across the road and keeping as far from the kerb as possible, seeking shelter under eaves and in shop doorways and in the entrance to the metro, as had their forebears, wearing hats and longer skirts, when they ran to find shelter from the bombing during the long siege, clutching their hats and with skirts flying, according to photos and documentaries I’ve seen about the Civil War: some of those who ran to avoid being killed are still alive, whilst others born later are dead…

The living inter the dead and mourn their death but life in the world of the living continues despite anything…

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘It is unbearable that people we know should suddenly be relegated to the past.’

Death is inevitable. From the very first page of Javier Marías’ flawlessly executed novel ‘Tomorrow In the Battle Think On Me’, death becomes a constant companion to the reader, always whispering in our ear the truths of our impermanence and the endless variety of possible deaths that await us – horrible deaths, ridiculous deaths, death that may make a stranger laugh when they read it in the paper. ‘Any dead life lasts longer than an inconstant lived life’ and our time spent beneath the sky leaves such a tiny trace once we are transferred to our time beneath the soil. However, every single moment of our living actions are intertwined with those around us and bear down in their memory. There is, unfortunately, a fair amount of misogynistic portrayal of women as accessories to the lives of the men here in the narrator’s telling, though everything is so morally grey the way he paints impressions of life. Through a narrator whose tightly knit, yet meandering ruminations serve as an exquisite investigation into the implications of storytelling and language, Marías examines the permanent marks the departed leave on our consciences, the voids their absence forms in our lives, and our endless interconnectivity as we are flung forward towards oblivion.

‘How little remains of each individual in time, useless as slippery snow, how little trace remains of anything…’ This chilling sentiment is often pondered by the narrator throughout this incredible novel. After a potential fling with a married woman is suddenly extinguished by her sudden death, our narrator must bear the burden of her memory, her name, and that of her young child whom he sets out a plate of food for before slipping away into the night, is forever etched into his conscience. ‘What a disgrace it is for me to remember your name, though I may not know your face tomorrow’ The lives of those lost slowly slip into ‘the reverse side of time, it’s dark back’, their features slowly fade in our memory; their belongings become redundant and useless - their personal charm washed away with the fleeting spirit; and slowly they dissolve from the world as we look to those alive and think on the dead less and less as time assuages the pain of their loss. While Marías often leaves the reader flailing in a vacuum, facing their inevitable oblivion, there is a sense of hope. There is hope in the fleeting ways we leave our living on the lives of those we encounter, cradled in their memories to cling to the world through them.

In this way, Marías presents a Madrid characterized by its ghosts. The living slip through the streets with carrying the ghosts of others in their minds and hearts, streets are named for famous fallen heroes, parks named for bombing mishaps during the war – the whole city is entrenched in its history. However, it is not only the dead who are faced with their dissolution, and all throughout the novel we are presented with characters slowing dissolving into oblivion despite the beating of their hearts. The narrator is a political ghostwriter who writes for another ghostwriter – a mere ghost of a ghost, a political leader that enlists his aid fears being forgotten and not leaving a mark on the memory of his people, and characters shroud themselves in mystery and shadows to avoid connection to a death. While it is unbearable to know another has died, it is equally unbearable to dissolving while still alive. Memory is the only way they can cling to the world as well, such as a sullen speech by the political figure, Solitaire aka Only the Lonely aka Only You etc., where he expresses fears that ‘the more reviled the person, the more memorable they are’. Those who hold secrets inside feel so burdened by them that they must eventually bring them out into the light, not because of a growing shame eating away at the soul, but because ‘they have merely been overcome or motivated by weariness and a desire to be whole.’

It is the bonds we form with others that builds a sense of permanence, by sharing memories or sharing our stories, we pass them on so that we can forge a space in the hearts of others that will continue after our own departure. Sometimes our ghosts can be a heavy burden, such as the film seen by the narrator (a film of Richard III) in which an old King is visited by the ghosts of those who lost their lives in his name, mocking him, cursing him: ‘tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die.’ The world is but a history of ghosts seeking remembrance in the hearts of the living, sometimes out of love, sometimes out of malice. Yet how much of another can be imposed upon us, since much is ‘of no interest to the person receiving it, who is busy forging his or her own memories.’ The real irony, however, is that even our sense of permanence, the fragments that do find their way into the minds of others, is just another form of fleeting impermanence. Those who hold us in our hearts will eventually rot away as well, taking our ghost to the grave with them.

’[E]verything is continually travelling on, everything is connected, some things drag other things along with them, all oblivious to each other, everything is travelling slowly towards its own dissolution the moment it occurs and even while it is occurring…’

The way our lives are connected is illuminated brilliantly through Marías. The way others are etched into our hearts like names on a tombstone only cracks the surface. Marías uses language in a unique and compelling way to tie everything together. Using repetition to revisit many of the narrator’s luscious meditations when they apply to a new situation, it is as if he doubles back to stich a new fold together in the narrative, carefully sewing all the events and ideas together to form one large potent message on life and death. ‘When we go back to a very familiar place, the intervening time becomes compressed or is even erased and cancelled out for a moment as if we had never left, it is that unchanging space that allows us to travel in time.’ The way Marías juggles his themes and pulls all the vast array of ideas together in the closing scene makes for one of the most impressive conclusions to any novel I have ever read. It is nothing short of genius. Through this connection of ideas, Marías reminds us that this is a story being told to us, a story from one perspective turning the reality around him into a cast of characters to move about a narrative to express the way he perceived it, which opens up an incredible examination on language.

Not only is all of humanity connected, but words as well. Each word drags with it an assortment of connotations, which he examines in detail, each change from the usted to the tu and vice versa is dissected to extract a wealth of hidden meaning, and every word ‘is at once one thing and its contrary’ (an idea that Derrida would be pleased to see put to good use). It is our language that allows us to interact with one another beyond the purely physical, and while both leave us forever altered by any interaction with another, it is only through language that we are able to examine and express the ineffable impact of our collisions with the bodies and consciousness of others.

‘What a strange contact that intimate contact is, what strong, non-existent links it instantly forges, even though, afterwards, they fade and unravel and are forgotten…but not immediately after establishing those links for the first time, then they feel as if they were burned into you, when everything is fresh and your eyes still wear the face of the other person’

The physical contact bonds us to others, and not only to those we immediately make contact with, but all those with whom we are now linked to by the process of our minds acknowledging that the other has contact with people beyond us and now we are linked to them through this chain of interaction. The narrator often tries to recall an old Anglo-Saxon term that failed to be adopted into the languages that stemmed from it, a term describing the bond between those who have shared a bed with the same person. The narrator feels an unbearable burden to acknowledge all the men he may ‘be related to Anglo-Saxon-style’, and posits that the word has not survived because ‘it isn’t easy to accept the act that it describes and it’s therefor better not to name it’, a ‘connection based on rivalry and unease and jealousy and drops of blood’. It is language that ties us together the most; language binds us with those around us and with those throughout all of human history.

Yet we also have to acknowledge there is a rather deep misogyny implied in this, which does hang over a lot of the novel. It is, intentionally, an examination of masculine culture and how that does distort and hard, but there are some elements that are sure to raise a few eyebrows and the ending is...well lets just say you've been warned. Ultimately it is successful in what it aims to do but I feel its necessary to comment on that.

Having repeatedly drawn our attention to language, Marías uses the entirety of his story to examine the act of storytelling. ‘I am the one who counts,’ he tells us, ‘the one telling the story and the one who decides who will speak… therein lies the pathetic superiority of the living, our temporary motive for triumph.’ It is not the victors who write history, but merely those who survive the events. ‘People are interpreted by other people’ and it is through language that we interpret others and our surrounding events, and language is ultimately a fallible device. Every word we utter drags its weight in connotations and the debris of both the teller and the listeners perceptions further taint each word. Marías gives us not only an unreliable narrator, but a narrator openly admitting to his unreliability while insisting upon it at the same time. ‘[N]o one does anything convinced of its injustice,’ he remarks as well as that

‘everything depends on the end result doesn’t it, and that includes everything, even if it’s only an instant in time, one particular action varies depending on the effect it has.’

This presents a reality in which truth and morality is subjective to an individual, and the reader must be ever conscious to see through the narrative as it is delivered by a mind utterly convinced of the validity of each action. What may come across as endearing could be viewed as creepy from an outside perspective, which is something we must all take to heart, remembering to think outside ourselves in our everyday interactions. If we do act in acknowledgement of the injustice of our actions, our soul buckles under the weight, and visions of ghosts may haunt us in our sleep. We become enshrouded in shadows, burdened by our desire to become whole again through the act of storytelling.

The most impressive idea is that once a story has left the lips of the teller, it becomes the property of all those that have heard it. While it may seem improbably that each speaker in the novel should be so well equipped to deliver such moving and poetic monologues as they do, it must be remembered that it is the narrator’s story, and there words are now his property to use and shape as he sees fit, to elaborate and polish. It is in his right to ‘forget what really happened and replace it with fiction’. He is by trade a ghostwriter, and wouldn’t it be only natural to ghostwrite the words of those he interacts with? However, what is most important is that this is a story being delivered unto us, the reader, to take hold in our hearts and minds, finding its own sense of immortality by being passed from one to another. When we seek meaning, entertainment, joy and solace in the words of a story, it isn’t the events that matter and why should it matter if they are fact or fiction, because it is how the story reverberates within us that matters most. It is how we internalize and reshape it to fit our ourselves so we can pass it on again.

’Our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial’

Storytelling and language become this lens through which we view, distort, process and understand the world and that is an element in fiction that I am always seeking to read about.

'Goodbye laughter and goodbye scorn. I will never see you again, nor will you see me. And goodbye ardour, goodbye memories.'

This novel simply blew me away. It came highly recommended from an extremely trustworthy source, and managed to not only reach, but to jump leaps and bounds over my expectations. The misogynistic aspects do grate however, and while reading this book I saw it more as a criticism of the masculine culture the narrator is hoping to be part of but after reading several of his books I began to realize it was more indicative of the author. So that’s a bummer. Still, Marías is a master of language, meandering at every possible chance to cast a loquacious flashlight into each crevasse of thought along the way, yet keeping an incredible intensity as he builds this psychological masterpiece. The text is dense and macabre, yet darkly humorous and uplifting at the same time. His ability to tie such a wide range of ideas together is staggering, from large themes and motifs to clever repeated actions such as shoelaces coming untied to emphasize the idea of a life coming unraveled despite all attempts to hold it together. I confess I had an extremely difficult time putting together this review, there is too much to discuss and the only method of tying it all together into a feasible and comprehensive manner is to just read the novel. Or perhaps this book took such a hold on my heart that I feel any attempt to turn it over would spoil and tarnish it with my fingerprints. This novel is truly amazing, and a truly amazing portrait of our struggle to find handholds in eternity while being sucked into oblivion.
4.5/5

‘When things come to an end they have a number and the world then depends on its storytellers, but only for a short time and not entirely, they never fully emerge from the shadows, other people are never quite done and there is always someone for whom the mystery continues.’

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hace tiempo que tomé la decisión de releer únicamente aquellos libros que en su día no me gustaron o no lo hicieron en demasía. Esta estrategia responde a un lógica que a mí me parece aplastante: o bien añado al escritor a mi Olimpo particular, y toda una nueva bibliografía a mis lecturas futuras, o bien asisto complacido a la ratificación de mi criterio juvenil (dejaré la relectura de los que me gustaron para ese viejo que aspiro ser al que se la refanfinfle correr el riesgo de mancillar el buen recuerdo de una novela alabada antaño o de sentir una humillación retrospectiva por aquel lector tan orgulloso de su opinión que un día fui).

Una de estas alegrías recientes se llama Javier Marías y me la produjo la relectura de su Corazón tan blanco. Ahora esa alegría sale reforzada tras la relectura de esta Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí.

Y la cosa tiene su mérito, pues en cada ocasión mi alegría tuvo que sobreponerse a la ligera antipatía que sentía por el autor, una antipatía que se amplificaba con el rechazo que me provocaban sus personajes (el que cuenta, el que monologa), con los que, sin poder evitarlo, identificaba al autor. Unos personajes pedantes y distantes, propensos a la crítica aristocrática de modos y maneras, aficionados al chascarrillo machista, instalados en la desidia de que lo mismo da hacer que no hacer, observadores elitistas en un púlpito desde el que fagocitan toda la novela relegando a meros comparsas o simples pretextos al resto de personajes que son caracterizados con dos o tres burdos brochazos. Ya dije que la cosa tenía mérito.

Sin embargo, la novela tiene, como aquella del Corazón tan blanco, un principio potente que te engancha, te arrastra y ya no te suelta hasta el final. Los dos libros tienen un estilo, una estructura y un personaje-narrador semejante, con una prosa que… bueno, mucho mejor que cualquier cosa que yo pueda decir ya lo dijo estupendamente Juan Gabriel Vásquez al comentar Berta Isla, otra obra con la que, según parece, comparte estos parecidos (y empiezo a sospechar que es una tónica general):

“la prosa de Marías, digresiva y heterodoxa, está llena de meandros y desvíos donde acaso nos encontremos una joya perdida, o es capaz de dar vueltas como un tiburón alrededor de su presa, asediando una emoción, una revelación o una humilde verdad humana. Lo que quiere esta prosa es rescatar, del flujo incesante de los acontecimientos, aquello que no sabríamos ver sin ella: quiere detener el tiempo —o trastocar su normal comportamiento— para que no se pierdan ciertos movimientos, con frecuencia los más frágiles, de nuestra sensibilidad y nuestra conciencia; quiere hacer visible lo invisible, hacer que salga a la superficie eso que permanecía hundido porque nadie había sabido verlo."

Me encantaron sus meandros y divagaciones, su exposición, su representación; me interesaron los temas, estuviera o no de acuerdo, me hicieron pensar y me removieron por dentro, y no fueron pocos: la responsabilidad de los actos y las omisiones;

“he dado la espalda a mi antiguo yo, ya no soy lo que fui ni tampoco el que fui, no me conozco ni me reconozco. Y yo no lo busqué, yo no lo quise.”

la siempre incompleta y adulterada información con la que contamos para decidir;

“Un sí y un no y un quizá y mientras tanto todo ha continuado o se ha ido, la desdicha de no saber y tener que obrar porque hay que darle un contenido al tiempo que apremia y sigue pasando sin esperarnos”

las intrincadas complicaciones y repercusiones que puede acarrear cualquier paso que demos por inofensivo que parezca; la enorme cantidad de posibilidades vitales que se mueven a nuestro alrededor y a las que por ser conscientes en una ínfima parte no podemos responder en consecuencia; el rápido olvido de lo que fuimos, sentimos e imaginamos, la poca constancia que queda de nuestra vida; el autoengaño en el que caemos al contarnos nuestra historia, al convencernos de nuestra identidad; y la necesidad de contar y contarnos, de convencer o hacernos entender, del perdón y hasta de algo de compasión, de sacarlo de nosotros y poder seguir viviendo; el enorme peso que puede significar nuestro pasado ("Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí"). En definitiva, lo frágiles, azarosas e insignificantes que son nuestras vidas. ¿Qué tema puede ser más interesante y más relevante que este?

[Ilenia Zodiaco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una pantagruelica pippa mentale, condita da un fraseggio elegante, alcune riflessioni sulla morte abbastanza sentenziose da essere inserite sui social con l’ottica di rimorchiare e commenti misogini lanciati come coriandoli il martedì grasso. Il protagonista ha l’empatia di un bulbo non ancora interrato, è uno stalker ossessionato dalle nuche e dalle cosce delle ragazze, celando il tutto dietro una preoccupante pedanteria per Shakespeare. Il problema è che non è l'unico uomo così all'interno del libro.

Concedo a Marias ancora qualche altro tentativo perché voglio credere che la creazione di personaggi di scolo non rifletta la sua personalità come autore. Spero che sia solo il classico romanzo ombelicale di ogni grande scrittore in crisi da esercizio di stile.

P.S. Trovo esilarante che questa sia una delle citazioni più famose del libro: «Ciò che commuove di più, in un romanzo, è riconoscere situazioni ed emozioni vere che sapevi ma non sapevi di sapere». Quando letteralmente spero nella vita di non provare mai nemmeno un’ombra dell’incuranza del narratore che confonde tute le emozioni degli altri con le sue, abbassando la prospettiva sempre su un unico piano: quella del suo bassoventre.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

He must have thought his luck was in. They arranged to meet around her place. She had a two year old son, who was now asleep. Just the two of them alone, in her bedroom... The muted TV playing an old black and white movie with subtitles... After a few glasses of wine to soften the mood he is hopeful one thing will lead to another... Gearing up for the moment of passion, he wants her... But the last thing he expected was for her to die suddenly, at that very moment... A second ago she was in the land of the living, but now gone... Departed in a flash... What does he do? To be caught up in such a freak moment like this one. He barely knows her... But knows she has a husband away in London. In a panic, does he call?... And what about the boy?... Asleep in the next room. Could he simply just vanish into the dead of night leaving no trace he was evet there? As far as her family is concerned then, she died alone. But there are lose ends. Decisions... decisions...

"No one ever expects that they might someday find themselves with a dead woman in their arms..."

Coetzee and Rushdie are fans, so was the late W.G. Sebald, and I myself think Marías is one of the finest contemporary writers of his time, and it comes as no surprise to me he kicks off this intriguing and deep psychodrama of sex, guilt and family ties, with the preliminaries of sex; something he seductively covers so well in other novels. It is an intellectually stimulating affair set in Madrid, with psychological insights into how death firmly grapples with the living. Marías has a habit of characterising long rambling sentences, that sometimes drift and divert away from the main story, that are woven together to form cascading, pages-long paragraphs that work so well. This was my forth, and favourite, Marías novel. Such a tantalizing read. He thoroughly held my attention throughout, and I simply love his writing style.

After the initial unexpected setback of witnessing death, the narrator Victor, a ghostwriter, obsessively tries to find out more about his date Marta (the deceased) and her husband and family, before slowly revealing to the woman's sister and father what happened that night. But this is not a conventional story, as there are side-plots on aspects of identity concerning Victor; a meeting with the King of Spain; a flashback to a sexual encounter he had with a prostitute; and, his estranged wife more than two years earlier, this goes towards truly getting inside Victor's head, and what he is all about as a person.

I didn't fall into the trap of thinking this might be a sort of thriller. Yes, Marias does achieve the sort of tension and suspense that could be classed as Hitchcock-esque, but for me I see it was more as a deep psychological drama. The pace of the book is slow, and all the better for it; with so many small actions and gestures, however brief, with long-winded conversations, and even internal thought processes that are meticulously analyzed under Marias's attentive gaze.

Whilst there were times when I felt a sinister edge to the narrative, what surprised me was that on occasions there was an Almodovar style wry humour bubbling to the surface also. Many of the scenes are prolonged, but I never felt like anything needed trimming down. A dazzling, compelling and intelligent novel, where the human condition and sexual temptation are masterfully studied, unveiling complexities in his characters, of which Marias does so, so well.

[Fionnuala]

I don’t propose to talk about the details of the plot of Javier Marias' thought-provoking piece of writing but instead I will simply describe my experience of reading this Richard the III style monologue, because that is what this book is, a long speech by the narrator, Victor, in a calm, unvarying tone, a speech that states quite clearly that he is aware that his story is sometimes bizarre and frightening, and that we may find it unbelievable, in fact he says, I am the person doing the telling and people can either choose to listen to me or not, so he is not setting himself up as someone reliable, irreproachable, quite the contrary in fact, and I was frequently repulsed by Victor’s actions, but nevertheless, little by little, I began to warm to Victor, I began to trust him in spite of the ever mounting catalogue of odd behaviours, including his daydreams of strangling women with his long strong fingers, his obsession with the links that exist between men who have slept with the same women, and his propensity for spying on women in the street, and yes, this miracle of trust that I experienced is entirely due to Victor's superb ability to manipulate words, to seduce the reader with his intriguing reflections on memory and death, and so I scarcely blinked as he, whom they should have despised, gradually insinuated himself, softly and silently, into the very heart of the family of the woman who died in his presence in the early pages. Victor the victor.
……………………………………………

There is just one little plot niggle I can't resist mentioning: would anyone leave a message on the answering machine of his/her lover, knowing that the lover's partner might also access it? In this story, not one but three lovers make this mistake...

[Sawsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

سرد خافيير مارياس يتأمل ويتقصى التفاصيل الحياتية والانسانية
يبدأ بحدث موت مُربك وغير متوقع لامرأة يشهده الراوي الكاتب
وفي علاقة عابرة يموت أحد طرفيها يظل الطرف الآخر مجهول
والمجهول يملك حرية العيش بدون عبء الاعتراف بالحقيقة
لكن بقلب مسكون بالذكرى ورغبة في البوح والظهور للعلن

مارياس يعرض بمهارة ما يدور في نفس الراوي من تأملات ومشاهدات وذكريات
ويرصد التفاصيل العامة والخاصة في واقع يبدو عاديا لكنه يُخفي أكثر مما يُظهر
سرد جميل ومُثقل أحيانا بالتفاصيل

[Em Lost In Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Javiar Marias is on my tbr since forever with A Heart So White but I ended up starting this famous author with Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me.

Story starts with Marta and Victor on the cusp of starting Illicit relationship and while undressing Marta dies and thus started a chain of events that took us to explore how Victor dealt with all this sudden accident and what happens after that. Victor who is a ghostwriter observes Marta's family up and close when he gets to meet them. Sees for himself how the death effected them and how they are looking for this person who was with Marta at the time of her death.

Though nothing much happens in terms of action in the book, what take place is the dissection of the situation through Victor's mind, his meeting with a prostitute which made him reminiscing about his past, him thinking about all the "what ifs" that could have happened instead of what happened and finally the meeting Marta's husband and have his story.

This is something that comes real close to how we live our lives regretting about the things that we have not done and have done, how we could have make it better or which of our decision made it worse or thinking if our efforts are worth it or not.

I read it three months ago and yet find myself going back to it and thinking about it from time to time and I know I will be reading it again in future too. Highly recommended!

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sou suspeita. Adoro Javier Marías, adoro o modo como vai esculpindo as histórias, martelando as suas esquinas, fazendo sobressair os seus relevos, iluminando os pontos para onde o olhar deve convergir.
Nesta obra, voltamos a olhar para a substância das relações amorosas e para os fatores que condicionam as mais importantes decisões.
Gostei muito do fim. Não há moralismos, não há uma caça ao culpado. Há pessoas que amam, pessoas que erram, pessoas que não podem voltar atrás.

[Garima · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything is travelling towards its own dissolution and is lost and few things leave any trace, especially if they are never repeated, if they happen only once and never recur, the same happens with those things that install themselves too comfortably and recur day after day, again and again, they leave no trace either.

The writing of Javier Marias is a different case altogether. Repetition and recurrence are common aspects of his books * and yet they always leave an everlasting trace on readers mind. He handles melancholy with a tender touch of his words and let the sadness tranquilly seep through our being but at the same time he keeps a strand of hope lurking around so that we can comfortably sail through the waves of dense narration he usually resorts to without losing sight of the horizon and gets the precious reward waiting for us on the other side of the shore. The vividness of his storytelling is a treasure to behold. I can still see that half-naked woman lying on her bed and slowly, without making any noise, without any apparent struggle, saying her goodbye to this world.

Goodbye laughter and goodbye scorn. I will never see you again, nor will you see me. And goodbye ardour, goodbye memories.

She is peacefully resting now or maybe she is a little agitated and trying to come to terms with her new surroundings because the world she has left behind inhabits her dearest ones without whom she hardly imagined her life. Her father, her sister, her husband and her 2 years old child. But there is someone else. Someone who belongs to her immediate past, someone who is a no one for her family, someone who could have become someone special for her had she lived a little longer, someone who knows the circumstances of her death and that knowledge now bears heavy on his soul. That someone is our narrator, Victor and he knows his art very well.

Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, when I was mortal, and let fall thy pointless lance. Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow, let me be lead within thy bosom and at a bloody battle end thy days. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, despair and die.

Victor contemplates these lines from Shakespeare’s Richard III and relates it to his situation. A ridiculous situation. An unfortunate situation. A situation he didn’t choose for himself but now he can’t escape it. Then again, who choose to become a sole witness to a death? Who choose to make memories out of the last breath exhaled from someone’s red lips? Who choose to weave a story by pulling out threads out of the last moments someone spent in the arms of an almost stranger? Probably no one but life comes with its own bundle of surprises and dilemmas. Marías takes up these elements of life and indulge into a philosophical enquiry that treads a long path through unending sentences, frequent digressions and an eloquent prose. He leaves a reader numb by creating something magnificent with a tiny shred of a long forgotten past and illuminates the significance of a supposed inconsequential present. He makes us see and makes us admit that sometimes behind a normal facade, there hides both an angelic and a demonic form of our soul we never deem to exist. We never think ourselves capable of inflicting ruthless pain on someone or view ourselves as some sort of savior and before we know it, we becomes an inexplicable reason for somebody’s life and death.

One sees one’s past life as if it were a plot or a mere piece of circumstantial evidence, and then one falsifies and distorts it.

More than distortions, one can find a great deal of truth in the musings of Javier’s narrators. They seem to possess a rare understanding of life whereby they manage to touch upon nearly everything which tells us what it’s like to be a human being **. We all have our share of regrets, good and bad memories, estranged relations, incidental connections and on our journey towards nothingness, we tend to view all these things in different light at different stages of our existence but seldom we find a voice which recounts them for us in an astounding way as if someone secretly entered our lives and unveiled the longings, questions and ruminations of our silly hearts. Javier Marías is one such voice. Do listen to him. He’s a friend you always wanted to have. He’s funny too.

... how that death gladdens me, saddens me, pleases me.

5/Five Stars

* Following are my 3 Marías reads in order of preference:

1. A Heart So White
2. Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me
3. The Infatuations

** A nod to David Foster Wallace

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of sight - out of mind?

Other people in our life - they always affect us but they come and go. Sometimes they go because we are tired of them and do not need them anymore. Sometimes they just die. What trace do they leave inside us? Do they have a place in our memory? Do they disappear from our memory as time passes? Or does a part of them stays with us forever? And so does our guilt which keeps weighing down on us.

'Our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial.'
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'None that speak of me know me, and when they do speak, they slander me; those who know me keep silent and in their silence do not defend me; thus, all speak ill of me until they meet me, but when they meet me they find rest, and they bring me salvation, for I never rest.'
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'(...)so many things happen without anyone realizing or remembering, everything is forgotten or invalidated. And how little remains of each individual in time, useless as slippery snow, how little trace remains of anything, and how much of that little is never talked about, and, afterwards, one remembers only a tiny fraction of what was said, and then only briefly: while we travel slowly towards our dissolution merely in order to traverse the back or reverse side of time, where one can no longer keep thinking or keep saying goodbye: “Goodbye laughter and goodbye scorn. I will never see you again, nor will you see me. And goodbye ardour, goodbye memories.'

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

CRITIQUE:

The Strange Workings of Time

The act of telling a story takes up time, it prolongs time and, in doing so, prolongs life.

It preserves memories while we are alive, but it can also preserve them beyond our death.

Paradoxically, story-telling might even help us to accept death.

As Marias’ protagonist, Victor, says:

"I can tell the story and I can therefore explain the transition from life to death, which is a way of both prolonging that life and accepting that death."

Expecting to Reign

Victor’s story starts with an "unconsummated infidelity" and the unexplained, but natural, death of his new paramour, Marta.

Marias and Victor get the death out of the way in the very first sentence:

"No one ever expects that they might some day find themselves with a dead woman in their arms, a woman whose face they will never see again, but whose name they will remember."

A life has to be extinguished, so that the story may commence.



Man Ray, "Natasha", 1930

Committed to Memory

Proust and Joyce have likewise been concerned with the nature of memory and its ability to preserve both time and place in minute detail.

However, moreso than them, I feel, Marias is also interested in what happens to the memories of someone after they die.

Just as Marta dies in Victor’s arms, he wants to find out what really happened that night and why.

He tries to keep her memory alive by investigating her death.

So he starts to tell a story, a metaphysical detective story. He wants to flesh out his few memories of Marta, detail by detail, clue by clue, and we watch him, fascinated, as he pieces it all together.

Towards Our Own Dissolution

Marias offers us a mental snapshot of Marta at the point of death.

We hear her plead, "Don’t leave me...Hold me, hold me, please, hold me," as she lies foetus-like, half-naked and vulnerable on the bed. Then she exclaims, "Oh God, the child", thinking of someone else, her two-year old son, at the very end.

Soon Victor discovers that Marta’s husband is on his trail, and the progress of the novel concerns how their two stories come together in a slow-build denouement.

The novel flows towards this end in the same almost stream of consciousness manner that the narrative of Virginia Woolf’s "Mrs Dalloway" moves inexorably to its conclusion.

As time goes by, we move unwittingly closer to some sort of understanding, some knowledge, completion, closure, just as in life we move towards our own death.

In Marias' words, "We slowly travel towards our own dissolution", our own end, the end of our memories and stories.

How Little Trace Remains

Time itself has no interest in memories. Memories are passengers, a burden to it. They’re not the main game.

Life is a sequence of actions and thoughts. Once each of them happens or occurs, they are, in time’s eyes, spent, gone:

"How little trace remains of anything."

Just as we have to make an effort to keep love alive, we have to make an effort to keep memories alive.

The Passage of Time

Time just wants to move forward, openly, in the light, its own source of light, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible.

What has occurred in the past is of no consequence to time, its goal is the future, which it gets to via the present.

Time has neither a goal, nor a purpose nor even a direction, other than the movement forward, ahead, which is really no more than a measure of the elapse of time, the passage of time.

So, perhaps, time is nothing, really. Time is nothing, in reality. It has no value, it is worthless:

"All time is useless..."

Darkness and Light

Marias suggests that there are two sides to time. The light and the dark.

The light is time itself. The darkness, the reverse side of time, the absence of light, is what we humans bring to it, what we make of it, the shadows that are created as time shines on and around us.

It takes us to impose utility on time, to make it useful, and one of the ways we do so is memory.

Memories are Made of This

Memory is a conscious act. We memorise things, in order to preserve them:

"I will try to remember, on the reverse side of time along which you are already travelling."

Literature is a record of other people’s memories, both fictitious and real.

We read so that we can experience and preserve these memories, perhaps so that we can enjoy them vicariously, so that we can experiment and explore and learn, without scope for personal error or embarrassment.

Likewise, a photo captures a person’s soul at a particular time, which soon recedes into the past, but the photo remains.

What we remember, what we memorise is the things we think and do. And what we think and do revolves around our desires.



Man Ray, "Femme Endormie" or "Sleeping Woman", 1932


Seeking and Wanting

Marias explores how we "seek and want" in our lives. We pursue pleasure. We eschew pain. We chase others and occasionally catch them. We present ourselves as the answer to their desires:

"Tell me what would be best for you."

It’s implicit in this command or plea or request that we might be able to provide what is best for the other.

Perhaps, we do so in order to experience a moment or more of unreality, of fantasy, of enchantment.

We put enormous energy into our desires, our seeking and our wanting. They exhaust us, they haunt us, they make us weary. We spend our lives oscillating between "weariness and desire".

A Ridiculous Disaster

Frequently, we become the victim of our own desires, and perhaps the desires of others.

Marias doesn’t shy away from the absurd in his description of the life and death experiences of his characters:

"Marta’s death wasn’t just horrible, it was ridiculous."

There is something farcical about the way Marias tells aspects of his story (Victor’s meeting with the King, the indecorous, scoundrel nature of his friend and double, Ruiberriz de Torres, their hilarious visit to the racecourse).

Initially, for me, the sense of farce undermined the gravity of Marias’ novel (and is ultimately why I have given it four stars rather than five).

Perhaps, I was taking him too seriously, or only seriously? Perhaps, my essentially Anglo perspective was getting in the way of this literary version of Pedro Almodavar?

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

Ultimately, however, I think Marias' story had to incorporate these farcical moments, because life and love do.

We do things that embarrass ourselves. We do things of which we are ashamed. We do things that horrify ourselves and others.

We endeavour to hide our flaws, so that we can protect our self-esteem and our reputation. But life doesn’t just include, it embraces, the horrible and the ridiculous and the shameful. We have to acknowledge it, we have to accept it, we have to accommodate it.

Ultimately, we can’t edit the ridiculous and the shameful out of our life, our story or our life story. We know they exist, as do others. Others watch, others know they exist, others remember. The collective knowledge can’t be extinguished:

"So much else goes on behind our backs, our capacity for knowledge is so limited."

The Collective Consciousness of the Past

Memories and knowledge aren’t just individual. We alone can’t know everything.

Collectively, there is a reservoir of knowledge about all of us, lodged in our minds and memories. We have to put our heads together, and our minds, and our memories.

As a result, the loss of one individual, on death, does not necessarily detract from the collective bank of knowledge.

Still, we only live on after death in the minds of others, in their memories. One day, then, when our last friend or relative dies, there will be no one left to remember us, there will be no memory of us, and we will finally be dead to time.

This has been the way of all flesh for all of time, for eternity. We are part of a continuum, not of time, but of memories. In this way, "the recent present seems like the remote past".

But the past must one day come to an end.

The Special Ridiculousness of the Male of the Species

Marias frequently describes incidents as ridiculous or a disaster or a ridiculous disaster.

There is something peculiarly male in how he goes about this.

In Marta’s case, it was her death that was ridiculous. In Victor’s case, it was his desire, the way he and we males go about seeking and wanting.

There is something vaguely grubby and vulgar in his lascivious gaze, his analysis of Marta’s too small bra and panties, his unsatiated horniness, his subsequent lust for Marta’s younger sister Luisa (now the only surviving one of three sisters):

"I had still not seen that new body that was sure to please me."

Victor proclaims, "I never sought it, I never wanted it," but we don’t believe him. It's in his nature. It's in ours.

Marias sums it up beautifully:

"...only a man is capable of describing as disastrous a night that has not come up to expectations, a night when he had expected to have a fuck, but hadn’t..."

Note how a male converts desire into an expectation, an anticipation, a prediction of what time has in store for him, and so recalls the setup of the novel:

"No one ever expects that they might some day find themselves with a dead woman in their arms."

Back then, it seemed like a tragedy, in fact, at heart it is, but Marias’ skill is to make us realise that, at least as far as Victor is concerned, there is an element of farce in this tale of folly and failure as well.

A Time for Shame

If memory is intrinsically linked to desire, then it must embody expectation, just as much as actuality. A memory is not necessarily true, nor does it necessarily reflect well on us.

Memory, true memory, captures the past, our "folly and failure", warts and all:

"We are ashamed of far too many things, of our appearance and of past beliefs, of our ingenuousness and ignorance, of the submission or pride we once displayed, of our transigence and intransigence, of all the many things we proposed or said without conviction, of having fallen in love with whoever it was we fell in love with and of having been a friend of whoever it was we were friends with, our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial."

An End to Shame and Ridicule

Only death brings relief to the shame and ridicule we have brought upon ourselves:

"Goodbye laughter, goodbye scorn."

However, death also takes everything that was good about a life, the effort, the achievements, the rewards, the friends, the family, the love, so Marias adds:

”And goodbye ardour, goodbye memories.”

Death is inevitable, and one day the present must come to an end.

"Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me"

The title of the novel comes from Shakespeare’s "Richard III":

"Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die!"

It is reiterated many times throughout the text, although there is no clear explanation of its significance.

In the play, the lines are spoken to Richard by the ghosts of his previous victims, who forsee his fate, death in battle.

They contrast with the message to Richmond:

"Thou offspring of the house of Lancaster/The wrongèd heirs of York do pray for thee/Good angels guard thy battle. Live and flourish."

Perhaps there is a suggestion that Evil will be divinely punished, and Good will be rewarded.

However, elsewhere in the novel, Marias questions this inference.

He seems to suggest that we are the sum of our desires and expectations, which are founded in our memories:

"No one ever ceases to be immersed in life as long as they have a consciousness and a few memories to ponder, more than that, it is a person's memories that make every living being dangerous and full of desires and expectations."

Clearly, he thinks that our desires and expectations can be misguided, but is it wrong to be misguided, is it wrong to be dangerous?

Is it an inevitable consequence of Free Will, even if we purport to believe in Fate or Determinism?

"The living also believe that what has never happened can still happen, they believe in the most dramatic and most unlikely reversals of fortune, the sort of thing that happens in history and in stories, they believe that a traitor or beggar or murderer can become king and the head of the emperor fall beneath the blade, that a great beauty can love a monster or that the man who killed her beloved and brought about her ruin can succeed in seducing her, they believe that lost battles can be won, that the dead never really leave but watch over us or appear to us as ghosts who can influence events, that the youngest of three sisters could, one day, be the eldest."

There is a skepticism about Fate and Divinity here. Yet, it has to be weighed against the fact that, in the novel, Marta’s youngest sister does end up being the oldest of the three.

Perhaps then Marias’ message is that our desires and expectations might be misguided, they might be subjective, but at least they are ours, and they might just happen.

As long as we are alive, as long as we hold our swords aloft, as long as there is ardour, as long as there is effort, there is hope.

Memories are made of this. And stories.

"Don’t leave me...Hold me, hold me, please, hold me."



SOUNDTRACK:

Nick Cave – "Into My Arms"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0-cn...


"...I believe in love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you

"So keep your candles burning
Make her journey bright and pure
That she will keep returning
Always and evermore

"Into my arms, oh Lord
Into my arms, oh Lord
Into my arms, oh Lord
Into my arms"





Man Ray, "Natasha", 1929


Original Review: April 03, 2013

[StefanP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Najneprihvatljivije je da se u prošlost pretvori neko koga čovjek pamti kao budućnost.

,,Niko nikad ne pomišlja da će se zateći s pokojnicom u naručju i da više neće vidjeti lice čije pak ime pamti.“ Ovo je prva rečenica s kojom Havijer Marijas započinje Sutra u boju misli na mene. Od tog trenutka mreža obmane počeće da hvata našeg pripovjedača, njegovu agoniju će početi da pretapa u pamćenje, a pamćenje u zaborav. Životna staza pripovjedača biće ispunjena bremenom njenog imena, govora i pokreta kao i djeteta, pošto mu ostavi hranu i izgubi se u noć. Sam prizor djeteta koje još nije svjesno događaja te noći, i koji je ostavljen sam sa hranom i lešom u drugoj sobi ne može a da ne budi u čitaocu jezu ostavljajući utisak jednog čudesnog svijeta. Marijas nam šapuće o klizavoj postojanosti i olakom iščeznuću. Užasno je teško izgubiti nekog bliskog, ali šta ćemo s onima koje gubimo dok im još srca kucaju, koji polako počinju da blijede. Izgleda da je teže izgubiti nekoga ko je još živ. Postavljamo nazive ulica po imenima palih heroja i objekte po imenima stvaralaca. Imena samo još i pamtimo. Ako nemaš ime kao da ne postojiš. Dok je osoba prisutna pamtimo njeno lice i osmijeh, kada ona nestane s našeg vidika, kao da nije ni postojala. Ostaje nam njeno ime, godina i mjesto rođenja. Kao da smo priljepljeni za život samo sa ove tri stvari. Iako se čini da se Marijas poigrava i da je pripovijedanje krivudavo i nepouzdano, on ipak sve lijepo uklapa. Često se na jedan te isti detalj vraća po nekoliko puta i njega utapa u novu situaciju kako bi ispleo delikatne niti života i smrti, sjećanja i zaborava. Sutra u boju misli na mene je roman čiji korijen seže u „životu u nazad“ pri neprestanom preispitivanju sopstvenih postupaka i čuđenju sitnih detalja utkanih u događaje koji nas prate poput sjenke.

[Maryana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ghosts and ghosts of ghosts inhabit this novel, drifting through time and space, both haunting and being haunted. Memory is the only thing which makes it possible for them to discern the past from the future, clinging to this world and its ever-evanescent present.

What a disgrace it is for me to remember your name, though I may not know your face tomorrow.

It didn’t take very long for me to fall under the spell of Javier Marías’ long meditative sentences. Some people have compared this author’s writing to music and I wouldn’t disagree - his prose progresses effortlessly with a structure dwelling somewhere below the conscious mind. I wouldn't say repetitions, but reappearances of words, themes and feelings, as well as variations to those reappearances, permeate the text. After a while one starts to recognize a rhythm. There comes a moment of revelation, but then a break. And a new rhythm is born. Even despite some distortions and digressions, it is possible to find a hint of harmony. The truth is somewhere near.

The misery of not knowing what to do and of having to act regardless, because one has to fill up the insistent time that continues to pass without waiting for us, we move more slowly: having to decide without knowing, having to act without knowing yet foreseeing, that is the greatest and most common of misfortunes.

An essential ghostly reappearance - Shakespeare’s Richard III - haunts us throughout the text:

Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, when I was mortal, and let fall thy pointless lance. Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow, let me be lead within thy bosom and at a bloody battle end thy days. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, despair and die.

While reading this ghost story, it wasn’t easy to put up with its morally ambiguous narrator, the ghost (writer) Victor, his male gaze and predominantly misogynist view. Similarly to Richard III, Victor is haunted by guilt and remorse, yet he keeps on usurping things and people which don’t belong to him. Even the reader is completely dependent on his story and his version of the truth.

I am the person doing the telling and people can either choose to listen to me or not. One sees one’s past life as if it were a plot or a mere piece of circumstantial evidence, and then one falsifies and distorts it.

Although Victor’s views and actions can be easily condemned, Marías’ masterful prose creates this strange and addictive feeling of living inside the narrator’s head.

Everything can be ridiculous or tragic according to who is doing the telling or how they tell it.

There is an absorbing atmosphere reminiscent of a thriller or a film noir. At the same time, it could be a film in full color directed by Pedro Almodóvar, especially some comic scenes and almost absurd plot devices. Fortunately, there is no mention of madeleines, but the ghost of Marcel Proust is hiding somewhere between the lines. There are many reflections on memory and time:

Everything seems as nothing to us, everything becomes compressed and seems as nothing to us once it is over, then we always feel that we were not given enough time.

Lolita appears and reappears - there is an uncanny resemblance between Victor and Humbert Humbert. Will Victor plead his case? Or does Marías hint at something else? Curiously, it seems both texts tend to provoke a similar reaction. There are many readers who reject this novel, because they believe it justifies or even incites violence. I understand that some “unlikable characters” can be very triggering, but at the same time I wonder if some readers have ever heard about literature.

Such a haunting reading experience. As soon as I finished I felt an urge to start again, becoming myself a ghost and spending eternity unwrapping infinite layers of human thought and perception. Javier Marías is a very unique author whose writing can be serious, melancholic, ironic, humorous.

Javier Marías parted in September this year, a great loss.

How little remains of each individual, how little is recorded, and how much of that little is never talked about.

Yet your precious work remains.

Javier Marías,

I will think on you.


The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781 Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow!

P.S. Many thanks to my Goodreads friends whose enthusiasm made me discover Marías’ work.

[Ema · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel blew me away and I'm still working to fit my pieces together. I got lost into Marías' winding train of thoughts and I'm still trying to find my way back to reality. What was it that I liked so much about this novel? Well, everything: the plot, the subtle humor, the flow of words, the ideas, the profound pondering. I found and lost myself at the same time, and I really can't explain this; if you haven't done it yet, you should read the novel and see for yourself.

Marías talks about death, about memory, about guilt, about the power of names. He also talks about the life of a story, prone to be transformed with every additional mouth that will pass it on. The plot of Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me is merely an excuse for the writer to travel down the meditative path, to reach depths of thought that left me wondering and made me feel exalted. So many truths that I haven't thought of before, so many approaches that now seem obvious. He made me look at my possessions and ask myself: do these objects hold any interest to other people, or is it just me who justifies their existence and utility? And do I really need all these things around me?

There's death in this novel, unexpected and ludicrous, as in dying in your socks, or at the barber’s, still wearing a voluminous smock, or in a whorehouse or at the dentist’s; or dying in the middle of shaving, with one cheek still covered in foam, half-shaven for all eternity, unless someone notices and finishes the job off out of aesthetic pity. Through Marías, it suddenly becomes easier to look in the face of the life's worst enemy, to laugh at it and even embrace its possibility a little.

After we are dead, our memory ceases to exist, along with the ephemeral life of our personal things. What was important to us may probably lose its meaning to other people: everything that had meaning and history loses it in a single moment and my belongings lie there inert, suddenly incapable of revealing their past and their origins. Our smell might persist for a while, if windows are not opened and clothes are not washed. But our bodies will travel towards dissolution, like all things that are never repeated, or happen so often that tend to fall into non-existence. Just as the unwanted belongings, our bodies will suddenly become useless, prone to be discarded like all the scraps that will rot. Our faces will become foggy, but our names will forever be remembered by those who once knew us. Raw, plain reality that we'd better be able to confront.

It isn't just the minuscule history of objects that will disappear in that single moment, it’s also everything I know and have learned, all my memories and everything I've ever seen– my memories which, like so many of my belongings, are only of use to me and become useless if I die, what disappears is not only who I am but who I have been, not only me, poor Marta, but my whole memory, a ragged, discontinuous, never-completed, ever-changing scrap of fabric.

But how does memory work? Even the King (also known as One and Only, Solo, Solitaire, Lone Ranger, Only the Lonely and Only You) is worried that he won't go down in history with some identifiable traits of character. He is ready to invent such traits, so that people could remember him more easily. But he is not aware that famous figures benefit from the power of myth that comes with the passage of centuries and sometimes from their vile feats. While some are forgotten and lost in the mists of time, others are perpetuated and become legends. But the vast majority of people is sentenced to a life of ghosts, lurking in the shadows, never quite stepping into light. Looking at their last achievement and denying their past, people believe they pass through important transformation, but are they really changed into a new, completely different person?

Even if this was my first novel by Javier Marías, his works are etched in my mind, so I could notice that, throughout the narration, he used phrases that later were to become titles of other novels: What a disgrace it is to me to remember your name, though I may not know your face tomorrow; who is going to hurl us over on to the reverse side of time, on to its dark back; Tomorrow in the battle think on me, think on me when I was mortal.

There are so many other things here that are worth discussing, but I've already written too much. The novel's only fault may be that the characters' voices are not quite distinct: the narrator and the cheated husband talk in the same way, and it's a bit hard to believe in such a chance encounter between two meditative people. But I chose not spoil the joy of devouring Marías' words and imagined instead that everything was filtered through the narrator's voice, thus becoming his story. But wait, this must be it and it makes sense: it is his story now, told in his own words, in his own style.

[Noce · Rating 4 out of 5]

In confronto, il regista di Sliding doors è un dilettante.

Quando Dio distribuiva il permesso di scrivere romanzi con frasi lunghissime senza far cascare il latte alle ginocchia, in fila non c’era solo Saramago. Con lui c’era anche Marìas.

Quindi, superato lo sgomento,dovuto alla prospettiva che ci sia, non uno, ma almeno due scrittori, nei confronti dei quali, dovete armarvi di santa pazienza, leggere con calma, tornare indietro se occorre, puntare il ditino sulla parola esatta, ogni volta che alzate lo sguardo dal libro per paura di perdere il segno, sappiate che dovete poi prepararvi a un compito ben più arduo.

Entrare con tutt’e due i piedi nel regno delle possibilità.

Vi ricordate il film “Sliding doors” dove si ipotizza che l’accadimento o meno di un fatto banale, porti a vivere due vite completamente diverse? Bene, bambinate!!!

Marìas fa esageratamente di più.

Lungo tutto il libro assisterete non soltanto all’esposizione di un ventaglio di ipotesi possibili per ogni azione, a seconda che questa avvenga o meno, ma anche alle possibili infinite trame causate da ognuna di queste possibilità.
Ma la cosa eccezionale, quasi sovrumana, è che mentre noi ci facciamo in quattro per non perdere il segno all’interno di una sua frase, Marìas invece non perde mai il filo delle sue elucubrazioni, anzi! Credo che quasi si diverta a esaurire tutte le alternative potenzialmente probabili.

E la cosa altrettanto incredibile è che, nonostante la lettura per niente distensiva, la trama quasi inesistente, perché vi ricordo che appunto si tratta del dipanarsi di trame possibili, ma non garantite nel verificarsi, Marìas è in grado di tenervi col fiato sospeso proprio per questo.

Non per la fine della storia, ma per scoprire a fine libro, qual è l’unica possibilità certa, quella definitiva.

E udite, udite!! Scoprirete che non è detto che sia compresa nella rosa delle possibili alternative che avete osservato concretizzarsi lungo tutta la storia.

In fondo non è altro che un elogio alla coincidenza e alla possibilità che oggi,mentre buttate la spazzatura, possiate o tornare a casa dopo 5 minuti, o cambiare la vostra vita per sempre.
Chi lo sa!

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book no longer exists.

I told this to the owner of the bookstore, it was of course empty.

You are the second person to complain. The first was much younger than you. More my age.

You have not read the book, I asked as he sat at the edge of a table mostly emptied. He shook his head. Then, that would explain it, I would like my money returned.

Can't do.

But I no longer have a book that I bought here.

Explain yourself.

O.K. It begins with a dead woman in the narrator's arms. He will remember her name but never see her face again. I'm hooked. The three hundred and eleven pages solid in my hands. It read fast.

But you were disappointed?

No, you're not understanding. He was a great storyteller, craftsman. He planted images, situations, thoughts throughout tightening the narrative, creating unquestioned believability. There was a voice. It was a voice of intense inner reflection but never interrupted the flow. The suspense kept me reading through two nights.

You want your money back because you didn't sleep? I have boring books for you.

No. The plot was intricate, perfectly balanced, pitched. At times the voice even evolved into hard-boiled crime noir in breaks from this fascinating inner life of self-reflections. I bought a suspense novel. It was what I needed. But set in this noir form was the highest philosophical thinking on the nature of reality, on identity.

Too difficult...?

Not at all. He mixed speculation with dramatization of everyday life. It isn't as though this crime story of everyday detail is greatness like...Virgil...or

I sold it to you as, greatness?

No, yes you did. You said it was what set him apart. That within this non-elevated, non-classical literature form he spoke both to modern times and the universal. You said that it wasn't some masterful trick of craft.

And...? He folded his arms.

O.K. There was greatness. The story evolved from its complex characters, heartless, surprisingly caring at times, fascinating. But... he showed how our identities are cobbled together by distorting and selecting memories, delusions. If we can get others to mirror back this image of us we then can see ourselves how we need to see ourselves. We select those who will provide this favor but they too are cobbled together and wanting to create themselves as a certain presentation. According to him this is true of all the broadcasted world. What we see on the news, read in the papers is prepared, rehearsed then proffered in distillations according to same favored plan.

He rose then sat down again. I said this?

I read it. In the book.

Everything is stories.

He shows that the teller of the story has the power and will tell it any way they want. Then it will be the listener's to hold and make their own, to tell to themselves and others. The same story can never be told the same twice, not even by the same person. Our consciousness will be filled by the stories we tell ourselves and those told us by others.

So, in the end it wasn't suspenseful enough and you want your money back. Like the last guy. It's not going to happen.

I haven't eaten for for three days...

I have no food here. Didn't you see the sign?

I can't eat. I haven't finished reading the book yet. I'm just coming to the end...

I sure hope so.

No, I mean the end of the book. I have to find out what happens.

So why didn't you bring the damn book and finish reading it?

Because...Because the book I held in my hands was a story...a story being told...a story cobbled together out of the consciousness of someone cobbled together. Sorry Mr. Marias. It was a great story about the immutability of truth, about writing and reading, about life as if we lived on a forgotten planet and knowing this all history is our attempts to adapt and survive. Everything. Even this conversation. After leaving me heart-pounded and sweat-ridden the book dispersed into nothing. Can't you see I am holding nothing? At least I think it is me holding it... I looked up. He was gone.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvellous. Loved the serpentine sentences with their astonishing thought-within-thought, near-metaphysical poetic lilt, preference for the cosy comma over the sloppy semicolon, their use of not-oft-seen things like reported speech (and thought!) within parentheses, or another character’s dialogue(!), repeated phrases (“dark back of time” about six times) and callback to earlier passages and quotations to elevate the plot matter to something loftier than the obvious. Mike is right—Marías, aside from being Spain’s premier James Belushi impersonator, is an origamist. But where is that elusive fifth star, ye cry? Despite my love for these sentences, not every one was lusciously lickingly lovely—plenty felt like stylistic run-ons, not unlike Hubert Selby deploying his punctuationless style merely as a formality in later books like The Willow Tree, and left this asthmatic reader gasping for that most arcane of necessities, a paragraph break. Meanderingness also experienced in the middle portion of the novel regarding the hero’s ex-lover, but the novel builds towards a stupendously bendy climax, where Marías delights in scrunching one’s brain into various cubist swans and other pond creatures, and all is happy again.

[Nood-Lesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tutto viaggia lentamente verso il proprio sfumare in mezzo alle nostre inutili accelerazioni e ai nostri ritardi fittizi

Forse ho scelto di rileggere “Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí” perché dopo duemila pagine di narratore ottocentesco onnisciente e disquisente (Guerra e pace) avevo bisogno di essere dentro la vicenda, avevo bisogno dei dubbi al posto delle sentenze, degli avvitamenti al posto dei dispiegamenti, della piccineria privata al posto della grandezza storica, della prima persona in luogo della terza. Ho scelto di rileggerlo anche per capire se la stella che mi pareva di avergli sottratto venti anni fa, fosse giusto restituirla.
Leggere Marías è come togliere l’imballaggio ad una sedia impacchettata negli anni 80. All’epoca le sedie erano fasciate con lunghe strisce di carta increspata marroncina; era un errore tagliare quella carta con le forbici, conveniva srotolarla e avvolgerla simultaneamente su sé stessa. Ognuna delle strisce di Marías è più lunga di un metro, spesso le strisce sono sovrapposte, occorre pazienza, il premio è un prodotto integro perché protetto con estrema cura.
Ho sottolineato di nuovo i passi che in questi venti anni (la prima lettura è del 1999) mi è capitato di citare numerose volte, mi sono reso conto che più dell’intera storia (non mi ricordavo il finale) erano quei passi ad aver attecchito, ed altri dimenticati ad avermi ispirato idee che credevo fossero mie ed invece erano di Marías.

L’incipit del romanzo è assai famoso e spiazza immediatamente il lettore

Nessuno pensa mai che potrebbe ritrovarsi con una morta tra le braccia e non rivedere mai piú il viso di cui ricorda il nome. Nessuno pensa mai che qualcuno possa morire nel momento piú inopportuno anche se questo capita di continuo, e crediamo che nessuno se non chi sia previsto dovrà morire accanto a noi.

Marta, sposata e madre di un bambino piccolo, approfittando dell’assenza del coniuge volato a Londra per lavoro, invita a cena Victor. Il vino, il filetto irlandese, il corteggiamento..
La vicenda prende avvio e incolla il lettore alle prime cinquanta pagine. Le cento successive non saranno altrettanto impattanti, bisognerà attendere che Marías renda credibile una vicenda che ha tutti i canoni del paradosso. Come accade solitamente nei libri dello scrittore spagnolo, la vicenda è il pretesto per una serie di riflessioni sulla vita e sul posto che ognuno di noi occupa nel mondo. Non ci si riconosce nei personaggi di Marías ma nelle loro elucubrazioni; a ciascun lettore le sue, a ciascun lettore il fastidio per quelle che ritiene inutili e il piacere per quelle “che sapeva ma non sapeva di sapere”.

La traduzione è molto curata, mi hanno sorpreso dunque i cambi repentini dal passato prossimo al passato remoto, quasi delle amnesie verbali. Sono sicuramente frutto di una scelta che io però non ho condiviso. Ricopio uno dei periodi incriminati.
Deán si è alzato come sospinto dalla mia domanda ed è tornato alla sua posizione iniziale, il gomito appoggiato allo scaffale, una posa decorativa, un uomo magro, un uomo alto. Gli si oscurò ancora di piú l’espressione, il mento energico sembrava in fuga, gli occhi del colore della birra parvero diventare demoniaci..

La lettura di Domani nella battaglia pensa a me, nonostante la differenza di mole, è più onerosa di Guerra e Pace. Sbagliavo a credere che la prima persona mi avrebbe ritemprato dalla stanchezza causata dalle duemila pagine della terza. Uno dei pezzi forti del libro è il suo epilogo (il Discorso pronunciato a Caracas il 2 agosto 1995, durante la cerimonia per la consegna del Premio Rómulo Gallegos) che contiene una riflessione sulla stranezza di scrivere e leggere romanzi. Quella riflessione è anche la chiave della serratura di Domani nella battaglia pensa a me.
Per il saccheggio pluriennale e reiterato (*1), per esser stato il mio primo Marías, per aver scoperto di averne attinto anche inconsapevolmente e perché “finiamo con il vedere tutta la nostra vita alla luce di ciò che è ultimo o di ciò che è più recente” assegno al libro la stella che avevo trattenuto dopo la prima lettura

(*1) Refurtiva

OROLOGIO
Tutto viaggia lentamente verso il proprio sfumare in mezzo alle nostre inutili accelerazioni e ai nostri ritardi fittizi.

BRACCIALETTO
Quel che succede non succede del tutto fino a quando non viene scoperto, fino a quando non lo si dice e fino a quando non lo si sa

ANELLO
L’accaduto è perciò sempre molto meno grave dei timori e delle ipotesi, delle congetture e delle supposizioni e dei brutti sogni, che in realtà non introduciamo nella nostra conoscenza ma che mettiamo da parte dopo averli sofferti o dopo averli considerati..

COLLANA
Sono una persona passiva che quasi mai cerca o vuole qualcosa o non sa quel che cerca e vuole e che viene raggiunta dalle cose, basta rimanersene tranquillo perché tutto si complichi e arrivi e ci siano furia e litigi, basta respirare nel mondo, la minima oscillazione del nostro respiro come il lievissimo va e vieni che non possono evitare di avere le cose leggere che pendono appese a un filo, il nostro sguardo velato e neutro come l’inerte dondolio degli aerei attaccati al soffitto, che finiscono sempre per entrare in battaglia a causa di quel tremolio o pulsare minimo.

================================================================

1999
★★★★
Le 51 pagine del folgorante inizio mi sono apparse un po' prolisse, ad un certo punto mi sembrava indugiasse oltre misura, stava tirando fuori troppe similitudini per descrivere l’incresciosa situazione. A me piace quando c'è una similitudine sola, quella perfetta, che ha corrispondenza pressoché assoluta con la storia che si sta raccontando.
La sua ragnatela si è comunque rivelata di ottima fattura, lo zapping della notte fatidica gli è servito a mettere in luce come sia casuale quello che accade a ognuno di noi. Mi piace l'idea che tutti gli elementi chiamati in causa trovino la loro collocazione finale, mi dà la sensazione di un lavoro ben fatto. Marìas rispetta questa convenzione: le parole del Solus, quelle di Dean i comportamenti di Celia, i ghost-writers, tutto si riunisce nel concetto "occhio non vede, cuore non duole".

[AiK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Начало было обескураживающе странным - непонятно от чего умирает молодая женщина во время прелюдии к сексу с мужчиной, с которым она познакомилась две недели назад. У нее есть двухлетний ребенок, а муж уехал в краткосрочную командировку. Мужчина, его звали Виктор, демонстрирует крайний эгоизм, оставляя ребенка с умершей, с трупом матери, не вызвав врачей, родственников, и даже мужу позвонил не сразу, а позвонив в гостиницу, так и не заговорил. Он, конечно, испытывал смятение чувств, не зная, что делать - то ли звонить мужу, то ли просто уйти, вытащить ли еды из холодильника, чтобы малыш утром смог найти и поесть. Но все равно он оставил труп умершей любовницы в квартире с ее малолетним сыном и тихонько ушел. Нормально ли это? Для него главным было, чтобы его не беспокоила полиция (очевидно, что его несостоявшаяся любовница умерла от естественных причин, но он просто не хотел, чтобы кто-то узнал, что он был с ней в последние минуты ее жизни). Стащив кассету с автоответчика, он пытается разгадать ее тайны.
Затем он встречается с проституткой, напоминающей его жену, которая тоже стала проституткой. Эта линия не очень развита, и непонятно, почему так сложилось, и зачем автор ее ввел. Мы узнаем, что он -писатель-призрак, и пишет Единственному (королевской особе) речь, которая ему не понадобилась. Эта несомненная критика сложившейся в мире практики, когда наемные спичрайтеры пишут за высокопоставленных особ, и это не считается плагиатом - пожалуй, единственное, что мне понравилось. Единственный смотрит старый фильм по мотивам пьесы Шекспира и строки этой пьесы дали название роману. Очевидно, Мариас вкладывал смысл романа именно из этой цитаты, но, мне кажется, что покойники у Шекспира в Ричарде III, и в этом романе - из разных опер. В конечном итоге, он встречается сначала с сестрой, затем с мужем Марта, и узнает недостающие детали истории. Муж - точно такой же, как он по части безответственности. Он уехал не в командировку, а с любовницей Евой, развлечься и чтобы та сделала аборт. Когда он случайно выяснил, что Ева не беременна, а лишь инсценировала беременность, они поссорились. На его глазах она выбежала из автобуса и, попав под машину, умерла. Он сделал вид, что незнаком с ней и уехал в гостиницу. Правда, узнав, что жена внезапно умерла, даже пожалел, что и любовница умерла, а то бы может он на ней даже женился.
Мужчины-главные герои в этой книге - отъявленные эгоцентрики и настоящие безответственные подлецы. Их поведение инфантильно, преступно в неоказании помощи и бегстве с места смерти, их равнодушие и чёрствость удивляют.

Несколько раз Мариас давал смерти эпитет "смешная". Но смерти в этом романе вовсе не смешны. Героини прописаны плоско, здесь они вроде расходного материала - ими пользуются, и даже смерть не вызывает к ним минимального уважения, их выбрасывают из жизни, именно как отработавшую свой ресурс деталь.
В общем, это не мой роман. Хотя здесь в GR - сплошь восторженные отклики.

[Gattalucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Premessa:
1)non lo puoi leggere a letto 
2)non lo puoi leggere dopo pranzo 
3)non lo puoi leggere per più di mezz'ora ogni volta... 

Epperò:
Mi avevano detto che era un libro sulla morte. Credo sia un libro intorno alle riflessioni che la morte ci solleva, quella di chi ci è caro come di chi ci è estraneo, o incontriamo per caso, o abbiamo la disavventura che ci muoia tra le braccia senza che ci si possa fare nulla.
Un libro di tutte quelle seghe mentali che ci partono dopo, sul perchè, e sul percome, cosa sarebbe successo se invece...e forse se avessi fatto, o se l'altro avesse detto, o se si fosse fermato un attimo solo...tutto quel dialogo interiore, per lo più inutile ma inevitabile, che ci accompagna per giorni, per mesi, che ci occupa i pensieri, che ad un certo punto ci avvelena la vita, lottando con il bisogno di acquietarlo, pregando di potercene al fine liberare.
E invece no. Credo che lo zoccolo duro, anzi, il nucleo caldo e molle del libro sia l'inganno, il saper o il non sapere, e l'inaccettabilità del sapere troppo tardi ciò che, se conosciuto, avrebbe cambiato il nostro modo di comportarci, e comunque il nostro modo di vedere la nostra vita.
“Vivere nell'inganno o essere ingannato è facile, e anzi è la nostra condizione naturale, nessuna va esente da questo e nessuno è stupido per questo: non dovremmo opporci più di tanto e non dovremmo amareggiarci. Tuttavia ci sembra intollerabile quando alla fine sappiamo”. ... Perchè ci sono cose che uno deve sapere immediatamente per non andare nel mondo neppure un minuto con la convinzione del tutto sbagliata che il mondo sia altro a causa di quelle cose”
Un ritmo lento, poca azione, un rumore di pensieri, che ne muovono altri, come le tessere di un domino che cadendo trascinano inevitabilmente giù quelle che vengono di seguito.
E una capacità, quelle di Marìas (ma perchè sulla mia tastiera non c'è la i con l'accento girato dalla parte giusta?) di scrivere i pensieri nei dialoghi, quelli non detti, ma per questo più veri, senza virgolette, che non sai bene se poi li dici o li lasci solo lì, mescolati ai giudizi, che non dici, alle tue connessioni, che non racconti ma che ti illuminano ricordi e sensazioni solo tue...anche se poi rispondi solo con poche parole impersonali. (Occhio: dopo la lettura di Marias finisco sempre per fare pipponi come i suoi!)
Lento. Difficile.
Ma un geniaccio questo Marìas.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

I find it of interest, whose fear is considered valid and whose is not. Adulterers, government officials, prostitutes, stalkers and posers, insomniacs and purchasers of the flesh. The gap would be entertaining if rape victims were not blamed for their victimization and girlfriends in the refrigerator were not such a dick-driven trope and literature entirely existed within a vacuum, but alas. Regardless, I do not come to much praised echelons of literature to immerse myself in the skeevy creeps that poison the nightlives of children before they even know the term "sexual assault". Even more so if the author claims to be above morality, a strong signal for this is how the world ends.

Writing in the realms of Goodreads is great preparation for academia because of how neatly everyone refrains from the topics of impolite conversation. It makes for a lack of credulity when it comes to hoards of adulating ratings, but hey. Quality literature is not for those who have lost something to the "everything can be overlooked or assimilated, or even pitied" or gaslighted or invalidated or erased. Thus there is no need for warning signs for the more unsavory uncondemned aspects when there's prose and references and run-on sentences to discover and themes! The Themes! One can excuse any rape culture fantasy so long as enough Shakespeare's thrown in.

Stalkers have read this book. Abusers have read this book. Those who use those tools for purposes of physical violation have read this book and likely enjoyed it, for here is all the mental recalibration one would ever need in order to spur oneself to action. What's that you say? You thought the penchant for violation grew out of the woodwork? Oh no no no. It gets even better when the conversation is passed over completely for reasons of embarrassment in the realms of entertainment, for silence means acceptance, acceptance means normalization, and all those who abuse, all those who stalk, all those who treat the bodies of those perceived as weaker with impunity can breath a sigh of relief. What reason is there to regret the crime when it is academically correct to ignore its context?

The prose? I've read better. The lengthy sentence style? I've read better. The work as translation from the Spanish? I've read better. The Universal Themes of Utmost Importance By Any Means Of Fiction Necessary? Please. Interweave your first person casual gynephobia with Shakespeare and spawning description all you like, it falls to pieces when you start sounding like the US Republican platform on abortion. The ghostwriting side plot was cute and would have been more so had there not been a good-cop-bad-cop routine when it came to treatment of the female form. Encountering either in real life would have me gripping my knife, for survival skill has no care for authorial intent, and deadening them in pursuit of "objectivity" in critical reception is not wise.

So the first person narrator technically didn't kill anyone. Cool! Congrats! Will you only consider him dangerous after he does? Better yet, will you only consider the author means for him to be considered dangerous after he does, cause god forbid the reader have any say in the dialectic. All else will forgive and forget through words, words, words, should I or any fall through the cracks, but I and many others will not. So what if the author didn't mean it? My business is with the readers, for what good is looking at the individual when there's a sociocultural mentality to deal with. The verdict: add enough words and fancy phrasings to your dehumanization, and you're good to go.

If I'm a horrible person for saying any of this, defriend me. Thinking that I'm on this site for the hazards in the populace is a sad mistake indeed.

[Szplug · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I had around thirty or so pages left to read, I felt a real stab of melancholy, a pungent sadness, that I would soon be finished with this particular narrator and his story - I liked him, commiserated with him, enjoyed the manner in which he presented his fascinating tale, the thoughtfulness with which he considered what had (seemingly) transpired, both to himself and (allegedly) to others, during the period of his enchantment, his haunting by the dead spirit of an unconsummated lover. Marías writes in an elegant and restrainedly profuse manner - very placid and tempered, lushly verbose in the absolute best of ways - that is the literary equivalent of silk sheets in an ornate hotel room in which every element operates at exactly the right level for maximum pleasure and satisfaction. I have read reviews that complain of Marías' multi-page paragraphs, the massive interior peregrinations that the narrator, Víctor, embarks upon at regular intervals, to which I can do naught but shrug my shoulders and say If you wanted cream and sugar, why'd you order coffee? I hung on every lovely and lovingly phrased sentence, the attention to detail, the wry comic wit that underscored certain sections, the taut suspense as the unexpected arose and turned the story in unanticipated directions, the ragged emotion and piercing insight that worked into the layered interactions and interrelations between the various characters. I suppose I can understand certain readers losing patience with the precise quality of this rich diet, but, then again, I can only wonder how they wandered into such a book in the first place. The back cover fragments state outright that this will be a narrative of blossoming discovery, self- and otherwise. There is not overmuch action that actually takes place over the course of its three hundred-plus dense pages, but a compendium of human truth and reality is discovered, uncovered, and laid bare to dry in the ofttimes harsh light of day.

Almost everything about Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, including its fragrant title, is perfectly pitched and unfolded for what takes place within - a brilliant, pensive, and elegiac exploration of how the unexpected and sudden death of a person affects the lives of those left to deal with such a loss in the realm of the living, a realm in which the myriad cruelties of time, enacted in the fulgent light of the sun and the ghostly luminescence of the moon, work their memes of decay and dissolution upon everything available to remind us that we exist - including the most prized and shopworn of all, our memories. In the complex way in which it probes and dissects the consequences of a premature death - and the wide net such a loss casts - it is similar to James Agee's shattering A Death in the Family , while the writing itself seemed almost a blend of Nabokov with Sebald, with traces of the latter prevailing a majority of the time over those of the former - and with generous quotations and allusions to Shakespeare's Richard III and Henry IV. This is a story of the stories that humans tell, for a wide variety of purposes: to keep memories - especially of those who were in our past but no longer in our future, however much we might have imagined them there - alive and active; to allow others the knowledge of events that, in effect, prove we are alive and of some influence in this, the front side of time; to distance ourselves from who or what we were, to re-imagine what happened in the past in order to recreate the self in the glass, to convince oneself that our prior actions stemmed from differing motives than what we once believed - in effect, to transform the bad into the good with enough conviction that it takes hold and perpetuates itself in living memory; to work upon other's emotions in an effort to appease our own weariness, our regrets and petty guilts, to endeavor, by truth or lie or both intermingled, to inspire forgiveness or sympathy or understanding in others for the actions that we undertake - and which generate laughter and tears, stem from love and hatred, inflict joy and pain, celebrate life or dial-up death - in the ceaseless chain of events which constitute existence.

When Víctor and Marta Téllez are exchanging the caresses that will lead to the enjoinment of their naked bodies, Marta suddenly takes ill and dies, her last request that Víctor hold her while her spirit surrenders, her last words an agonized Oh God, the child.Víctor, a steadily employed television scriptwriter and political ghostwriter, has only known Marta for a period of days - and with her husband, Eduardo, in London on business and her two year old son, Eugenio, asleep in his bedroom, the relative stranger panics and, unable to reach Eduardo at his London hotel, decides to leave, absconding with a slip of paper with the phone number where Marta's husband can be reached, her bra (which came loose as she was dying, and which retains the scent of her living flesh), and the tape from the answering machine, which incriminates both himself and another of Marta's lovers and ends with the heartbreaking sobs of a desperate woman and the poignant plea Please....Please.... repeated over and over. Víctor leaves out food and water for the child and convinces himself that the dead body will shortly be discovered. So many things have gone wrong, and he could have made so many different decisions at points along the way - the most obvious being to have refrained from accepting Marta's adulterous invitation, one in which, as Víctor repeatedly and talismanically avers I didn't seek it or want it; nothing was planned in an effort to absolve himself from this brief but life-changing episode.

The remainder of the story is that of Víctor's enchantment, his haunting by the ghost of the dead Marta, in which, having found himself lost in the shadows of being the nobody, the unknown person who was Marta's companion during those lost hours before her terrible and ridiculous death, he reaches out and involves himself with the woman's family - her devastated and blame-placing father; aristocratically moody and critically absent husband; beautiful and compassionate sister; electric shaver-voiced phone message lover; and the boy, already commenced upon forgetting his mother in her entirety. As Víctor works himself deeper into the family, and closer to revealing his critical role in this sudden and shameful loss, he also reveals the details of his enigmatic and estranged relationship with his ex-wife, one in which, for every truth he reveals, the reader senses another (and more important) one elided. There is also a visit, accompanied by Téllez, Marta's father, to the residence of the Spanish monarch, in which a royal insomniac's woes, detailed in a laugh-out-loud exchange, limn Víctor's own troubled life in a new light. The story works itself towards the moment when Eduardo, the recent widower, will be made aware of Víctor's role as the death-rattle witness - and will expose his own identity as a possessor of spectral memories.

Throughout it all, Marías held me enthralled, filling each page to the brim with his effortlessly beautiful writing, and dissecting the strange ways in which love plays itself out between spouses, how much we misinterpret the lives of those closest to us, and how complicit we are ourselves in contaminating our vision with such illusions and untruths - and how we can fool ourselves for surprisingly lengthy periods of time, if that is what we need to face yet another day in the charade. The ephemerality of our existence, the melancholy awareness that all that we have lived and known and experienced will, in the end, be lost with the invisible shimmers of our last drawn breath; the way in which, through the stirred memories of those who knew us, who told - or were told - our stories, we find the only way to extend the meaning and reason behind our lives, this image-drenched picture-book always perilously abutting the fires of forgetfulness which burn against the reverse side of living awareness, the dark back of time; such ruminations and reflections abound as Víctor explores his own peculiar enchantment. As in both Shakespearean plays, the narrator has usurped the place of the rightful personage, and is thus branded with the mark of the illegitimate interloper; and, like those tormented monarchs, he will have to struggle against the whispered promises of wakened pursuit by those ghosts whose stories he has interposed within and claimed for himself, and in which lies the source material for the rumours that they have lived - Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow! Think upon me, Let fall thy lance! Tomorrow in the battle think on me, And fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die!

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starting with a beautiful quote from Shakespeare, woven into the title and glossed throughout the novel, the battle for and against life begins with a look at death. The different forms of death begin to accompany the narrator, in a digression through the city of Madrid, in magnificent prose, in search of true meaning for life. After an unexpected death, following a first encounter, the narrator revisits multiple possibilities of rethinking what happened to him.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is there a proper definition of a Novel? Anything static and comprehensive? I'm speaking pressed paper here. Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me is at the core a philosophical question, one which allowed serial permutations. It features well developed characters. The protagonist reflects and remembers as he converses with others. Morality and epistemology dance in lurid circles. The distance between his personal thoughts and his social utterances remain (ever) vast and human. Perhaps that is my chief compliment of this effort. It is impeccably human. Even if the events depicted are extreme and somewhat exceptional, the reactions remain grounded, not adorned with artifice. The protagonist is framing matters, as if in a narrative of his design, yet the protagonist realizes his limits: surely as do the novel's readers.

Like most of Marias' work, this novel is dense, self-parsing. It retraces its steps and allows repetition, even at the expense of its own self-regard.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morpheus sister from the Sandman series reminds us at one point (in Brief Lives I think) that we all know how every story ends. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable. She is the avatar of Death, so I guess she knows what she's talking about. Javier Marias protagonist of this here story has all the pretending stripped off from his life when a casual romantic encounter ends with the woman dead in his arms. He becomes obsessed not so much with the fragility of existence, but with the transience of memory and with the fake identities we present to the outside world. What is left after we are gone? How much is lost from one's inner thoughts? Can we really say we knew another person?

It's just that something horrible and ridiculous happened to me and I feel as if I were under a spell, haunted, watched, revisited, inhabited, my head and body inhabited and haunted by someone I only knew in death and by a few kisses we could just as easily not have exchanged.

In order to solve the puzzle of the sudden death of Marta Tellez, Victor follows the people she left behind : her boy who sleeps under a canopy of toy airplanes from past wars, her aging and lonesome father, her little sister Luiza, her absent husband Dean. The physiological explanations of the event are insignifiant. What counts is the residue Marta leaves behind, the way she is reflected and remembered in the lives of her family and in the conscience of the stranger, the outsider, the 'ghostwriter' Victor.

The identity of Victor as a ghostwriter is reiterated in the text at every turn, both in the literal sense , as he is engaged to write a speech for the King of Spain, and in the metaphoric one, as he is the one who feels obliged to reveal the truth of Marta, the one who preserves her story for posterity before it is lost in the inevitable multitude of similar stories.

It's tiring having always to move in shadows, having to watch without being seen, doing one's best not to be discovered, just as it's tiring having to keep to oneself a secret or a mystery, how wearisome clandestinity is, constantly having to bear in mind that not all your friends can be privy to the same information, that you have to hide one thing from one friend and something else from another, something the first friend already knows about, you invent complex stories for one woman and, in order not to betray yourself later, you have to fix the details of those stories for ever in your memory, as if you really had experienced them [...]

Inevitably, in describing the quest for the truth of Marta Telez, Victor begins to tell about his own life, in particular his relation with his enstranged wife Celia: the lack of trust, the lack of communication, the jealousy and the regrets that haunt him still:

"That wretched Celia, thy wife, that never slept a quiet hour with thee, now fills thy sleep with perturbations."

This last quote is a paraphrase from Shakespeare, a fragment from the play Richard III that repeats itself through the text like the leitmotif in a piano sonata or like a hit song refrain that refuses to go away from your mind. The title of the novel is taken from the same scene in Shakespeare, with ghosts and impending death coming to haunt the cursed king:

Tomorow in the battle think on me,
and fall thy edgeless sword.
Tomorrow in the battle think on me,
when I was mortal,
and let fall thy pointless lance.
Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow,
let me be lead within thy bosom
and at a bloody battle end thy days.

Similar repetitions of themes as musical motifs abound in the text, reinforcing my analogy with a classical sonata, with Victor endlessly decontructing and speculating on every detail and possible interpretation of clues and trivial gestures : a recorded phone message, a dialogue at the funeral between two friends of the family, a siluette framed in the window of Marta's empty apartment. Some of his theories may seem far fetched or flights of fancy, but isn't this what we all do when we first meet somebody new? We construct stories about the other person in our head, often with little bearing on his or her actual inner self, which remains stubbornly hidden. And are we any better at revealing our true image, or are we adept at hiding behind safe walls of dissimulation and pretense?

We are ashamed of far too many things, of our appearance and of past beliefs, of our ingenuousness and ignorance, of the submission or pride we once displayed, of our transigence and intransigence, of all the many things we proposed or said without conviction, of having fallen in love with whoever we fell in love with and of having been a friend of whoever it was we were friends with, our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial.

Victor, in the midst of the existential crisis provoked by the death of Marta, sets out to fill in all the blanks in her, and in his own, story. The narrative is rendered almost in real time, flowing in stream of conscience mode, jumping from one subject to another in free association and passing from observation to philosophical musings in a blink of an eye. The extra long sentences that go from one page to the next in vain search of a stop point may be daunting at first and may require more than the usual concentration on the part of the reader to follow through, but they have a rhythm and an elegance I have rarely encountered. Despite the rambling structure, never once did Marias loose the thread of his argument or fail to deliver the punchline. I have no reservations about mentioning the name of Marias in the same breath as Proust, Faulkner or Joyce, both in style and in the thoroughness of analysis of human nature. This is only the first book of his I've read, but I can already join the chorus of people who hail him as one of the greatest writers active today.

The same long stream of conscience phrasing and elaborate argumentation make it difficult to extract significant quotes from the text without truncating the ideas and loosing the original flavor of the artist vision. But I fell in love with the text (excellent translation, by the way) and I ended up with quite a long list of bookmarks. I considerthem significant for the repetition of the major themes touched by Victor : memory, death, being a writer, love, marriage, the power of stories to alter reality.

First a riddle that is like a second musical theme in the sonata, taken from an inscription on an ancient grave:

none that speak of me know me,
and when they do speak,
they slander me;
those who know me keep silent
and in their silence do not defend me;
thus all speak ill of me
until they meet me,
but when they meet me they find rest,
and they bring me salvation,
for I never rest.
(Leon Suarez Alday, 1890-1914) the answer is Death

About how the act of writing serves to define and to solidify the ephemeral:

We are so easily infected, we can be convinced of anything, we can always prove ourselves to be right and everything can be told if accompanied by some justification, some excuse or by some attenuating circumstance or even by its mere representation, telling is a form of generosity, anything can happen and be said and be accepted, you can emerge from anything unharmed, or more than that unscathed. No one does anything convinced of its injustice, not at least at the moment they do it, it's the same with telling a story, what a strange mission or task that is, nothing that happens has ever completely happened until you tell someone, until it is spoken about and known about, until then, it is possible to convert those events into mere thought, mere memory, nothing.

Love is another victimn of the feeble memory, dissolved in comfortable routine:

the kisses of the one who is leaving, standing at the front door of the one who is staying, become confused with those of the day before yesterday and those of the day after tomorrow, there was only ever one memorable first night and it was immediately lost, swallowed up by the weeks and the repetitive months that succeeded it.

again time works against us, with variations:

Everything is travelling towards its own dissolution and is lost and few things leave any trace, especially if they are never repeated, if they happen only once and never recur, the same happens with those things that install themselves too comfortably and recur day after day, again and again, they leave no trace either.

and once more, for the win:

There is almost no record of anything, fleeting thoughts and actions, plans and desires, secret doubts, fantasies, acts of cruelty and insults, words said and heard and later denied or misunderstood or distorted, promises made and then overlooked, even by those to whom they were made, everything is forgotten or invalidated, whatever is done alone or not written down, along with everything that is done not alone but in company, how little remains of each individual, how little trace remains of anything, and how much of that little is never talked about and, afterwards, one remembers only a tiny fraction of what was said, and then only briefly, the individual memory is not passed on and is, anyway, of no interest to the person receiving it, who is busy forging his or her own memories.

so it is left to the ghostwriter to fix the perishable for posterity, distilled and enhanced by his own vision:

What isn't coarse or elevated or funny or sad when it happens can be sad or funny or elevated or coarse when you tell it, the world depends on its storytellers [...]

The portrait that emerges from the pen of the artist may be unreliable, fake, altered, but at least it has the illusion of coherence and purpose:

People are voluble and unstable and fragile and easily distracted from their own affairs, thus betraying or blurring their character, they have only to glance in the other direction and the portrait is ruined, or rather you have to falsify it and anticipate the death of the person being painted, painting him as if he could no longer change because he was no longer alive and would never again grumble about anything.

Also, the reader participates himself in the narration, bringing into the equation his own history and sensibilities. Marias goes full metafictional in the end, introducing different perspectives and commentaries on his own text:

Once a story has been told, it's anyone's, it becomes common currency, it gets twisted and distorted, and we all tell our own version.

If somebody else were to tell the story (Ruyberriz, the upper level ghostwriter, a friend of Victor): it would have become a story that was half-macabre and half-jocular, half-absurd and half-sinister, a horrible death and a ridiculousdeath, something which, when it happens, is neither vulgar nor elevated nor funny nor sad can be any of those things when someone makes a story out of it, the world depends on its storytellers as it does on those who who hear the story and occasionally influence it [...]

I could go on, but the themes start to repeat themselves, and I got tired of trying to analyze the book. THe real impact of the story was more visceral than analytical for me. It hit me hard in the places I usually shy away from, pretending everything will be all right, maybe we will live for ever and never lose the loved ones and won't be speedily forgotten when we eventually go away. It's only the start of the year, but I somehow know that 'tommorow' I will think of Marta Tellez and remember and that her tale will lie heavy on my soul. [shudder]

I don't want to say goodbye on this dark, brooding note, although this is the major tonality of the novel. There are a last couple of quotes that reminds us that life goes on, even if it does it without us:

It's so easy to live in a state of delusion, or to be deceived, indeed it is our natural condition: no one is free of it and certainly doesn't mean that one is stupid, we should not struggle so hard against it nor should we let it embitter us.

and

When things come to an end they have a number and the world than depends on its storytellers, but only for a short while and not entirely, they never fully emerge from the shadows, other people are never quite done and there is always someone for whom the mystery continues.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently, I made the mistake of reading this book after Marias's majestic trilogy Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear / Dance and Dream / Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (2002-2007), whilst this novel was written about 10 years earlier. So I got the uncomfortable and paradoxal feeling that I had read this before, that some of the sentences, sometimes even whole paragraphs, seemed run away from that later work. I can only conclude that in this early novel Marias had already perfected his typical style, and that a number of his themes were touched upon which he later worked out even more varied and more layered in his brilliant trilogy.

As to the style, again there are the drawn-out interior monologues, in which you flout around in the main character’s grinding head for pages on end, with sentences that often repeat the same reasoning but with slight variations, as in pieces of music. In terms of content, there are his typical existential themes: the proximity of death (sometimes very sudden, unexpected and inconvenient, as in this novel), the futility and transience of human action, the stealth or even conscious hiding that inevitably forms part of a human life, and finally the inexorable nature of time that makes what has happened indelible but often also hidden in an opaque mist. The closing sentence of this novel sums it up brilliantly: “And how little remains of each individual in time, useless as slippery snow, how little trace remains of anything, and how much of that little is never talked about, and, afterwards one remembers only a tiny fraction of what was said, and then only briefly: while we travel slowly towards our dissolution merely in order to traverse the back or reverse side of time, where one can no longer keep thinking or keep saying goodbye.”

There are a few more things that start to strike me as typical Marias: almost all of his main characters are fairly cynical men, who often lead a semi-hidden life (in this case it is a 'ghost-writer'), treat women without much scruples, but yet are intrigued by aspects of life that they had not suspected. In many cases there is also a manifest "film noire-esque" veil over the story, and the main characters - despite their cynicism - feel hunted, or better haunted by what has happened. And finally, a regularly recurring gimmick in his novels and certainly in this one, are the old black and white films that regularly are referred at.

I notice that with all that I have not released anything about the story itself. That may not be coincidental. While the plot is very specific and quite catchy (a woman becomes unwell and dies just when she's about to commit adultery, her would-be lover is trying to find out what happened), it doesn't really matter that much. As mentioned, Marias here again varies on his favourite themes, in his inimitable style. I certainly estimate the trilogy "Your Face Tomorrow" much higher, but this early novel again was really enjoyable.
(rating 3.5 stars)

[Karen· · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can see the attraction of the first person narrator. The risk, it must be said, is considerable: confinement to a single point of view can be rocks in the pockets of a plot that is trying to swim free. The exclusive and unrelieved company of a strident or grating voice can swiftly turn potential reading pleasure to pain. But a writer must find a certain tone of voice, an attitude towards the tale to be told that remains consistent. There is nothing more jarring than a sudden collapse into a different register. So yes, I can see how finding the person to tell the tale might bring a living, breathing voice with it.

When it works, it is a glory.

With a knowing little nod to Lolita, Marías here gives us Victor, a man whose actions we cannot condone. Surely? No. Even if it is three in the morning and you have only met young, attractive Marta twice before this rendezvous in her flat, even if you do not know any of her family or neighbours, when she dies, unexpectedly, ludicrously, in your arms, then you can't just go and leave her and her two year old son asleep in the room next door. And take the note of her husband's phone number at his hotel in London too. (And that is not the worst of it).

Victor can. And what's more, he weaves a marvellous spell which captivates and holds us in his power. Here is a thinking man, one who gives us a rich and heady feast in long sweeping sentences that stretch and ease their way over life interrupted 'nel mezzo del cammin', memory, the power of words, the vagaries of time, the tenuous bands that connect us to our fellow humans; over interlopers and usurpers, Falstaff and Richard III, monarchy, war, over haunting and enchantment, over storytelling and agency. Here is a man who sees, observes, recognizes. Scrupulous, discreet, tender. Wry. Warm. Even playful, those little nods of acknowledgement to the reader.

Action, inaction. Neither are to be condemned or condoned. The repercussions of what we do are unpredictable and any judgement is entirely relative. I didn't seek it or want it. Nothing was planned. By what criterion should we judge? By intent or by the actual result of the action? These are the questions that remain. Was it forgivable to leave a two year old alone overnight because, in the end, nothing dreadful resulted? Is it preferable that Marta at least did not die alone in the arms of a virtual stranger, or might she have phoned her sister or father if she had been alone and unwell? And in a truly wondrous final chapter, there is the husband, who also has the burden of a story to tell. A dizzying twist of irony means that Victor, the interloper, the usurper, is the only person he can tell his story to. No-one but Victor, the ghostwriter. Who can then take possession of his story too. The story belongs to the person who tells it. Victory.

[Tijana]

„Sutra u boju misli na mene“ počinje onim što je neki Nemac lepo nazvao osnovom za novelu: nečuvenim događajem, tj. skandalom. On se ovde sastoji u vrlo upečatljivo i postupno prikazanoj nesreći (i ovo nije spojler jer saznajemo za to na prve dve strane): za vreme prvog ljubavnog sastanka, mlada udata žena neočekivano umire intendiranom ljubavniku na rukama; u susednoj sobi spava njeno dvogodišnje dete, a muž je na službenom putu.
I tu, naravno, tek kreće drama – šta ovaj neostvareni švaler sad da radi? Da se pokupi u nadi kako će ujutru neko doći po dete? Da zove muža u hotel? A šta onda da mu kaže? I šta posle?
Marijas je majstor pripovedanja u prvom licu. Nepouzdanog pripovedanja u prvom licu. Ovo je izgleda neophodno naglasiti jer vidim da se dosta čitalaca na Gudridsu zgražava nad nekim izjavama i postupcima pripovedača kao nelogičnim (obaška što njegove stavove izjednačavaju sa autorovim), a, kako da vam kažem, već u drugom poglavlju primetimo da nas je pripovedač u prvom slagao povodom jednog detalja, tako da… obraćajte pažnju.
Roman je manje-više kao žestok slalom kojim se glavni junak sunovraćuje umereno očekivanim smerom uz velika narativna skretanja (ovo važi jednako i na nivou rečenice i na nivou celog romana) – tako imamo npr. zabavno-zlobnu digresiju o književnoj sceni i drugu o anonimnom pisanju govora za važne ličnosti – ali osnovne teme jesu nepredviđenost umiranja i strahota potiranja ličnosti koju smrt donosi; i problem toga što naše viđenje neke osobe ili događaja gradimo iz tek delimično poznatih okolnosti i, gradeći/pripovedajući, menjamo ih zauvek; i (ali ova tema se u punoj raskoši razvija tek u završnici koju vam neću spojlovati) to da su muškarci često bezočni lažljivi skotovi koji će po svaku cenu da prebace odgovornost na nekog drugog.

[Hakan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Javier Marias’tan yine etkileyici bir roman. Sırlarla dolu yaşamlarımız, arzu, ihanet, bağlılık, hafıza, sorumluluk duygusu ve tabii ki Marias’ın vazgeçemediği ölüm, ölenlerin yaşamımızdaki yeri, bu yerin nasıl ortadan kalkıyor olması bu güçlü romanda ustaca işlediği temalar.
Tamam, Marias’ın biraz bilgiçce havası bazılarına itici gelebilir. Kurduğu uzun cümleler, yan yollara fazla dalması da bazılarına hitap etmeyebilir. Ama karşınızda insanın doğasını çözmenize yardımcı olan müthiş bir zekaya ve derinliğe sahip, güçlü bir üslupla hikayesini oya gibi işleyen bir yazar var.
Romanın başlığı yine Shakespeare’den bir alıntı. Üslubunu değerli kılan bir unsur da, roman boyunca ortaya koyduğu bazı fikirleri, alıntıları, farklı bağlamlarda tekrarlayarak bir bütünlük sağlaması, bağlantıları kurması.
Bu çok yoğun metnin klasik anlamda sürükleyici olduğunu söyleyemeyiz. Ancak son 25-30 sayfayı adeta nefesimi tutarak okudum. Romanın son paragrafı da bu güçlü eseri taçlandırıcı nitelikte.
Romanın sonuna eklenen, bu roman için kendisine verilen bir ödülü kabulünde yaptığı konuşma ise roman sanatı üzerine harika bir metin.
Marias’ın çevrilmesi kolay bir yazar olmadığını düşünüyorum. Çevirmen Seda Ersavcı, belki ufak tefek bazı kelime tercihlerinden ötürü sorgulanabilir, ama genel olarak gayet iyi başarmış.