Apparently Marias is an acclaimed Spanish author, and a likely Nobel winner. All I can say, based on the evidence of this one novel, is that he sure knows how to make a spy story boring.
This lengthy novel is broadly about a woman waiting for husband to return from his forays into espionage. It might have been interesting as a novella. I would like it to have been cut by about 90%, including 100% of all gratuitous TS Eliot references. I did not get to the end of it, and I don’t usually blog novels I don’t finish, but after the 300+ pages I did get through I guess I have an opinion.
On the cover, The Independent asks: “Sentence by glorious sentence, is there a better novelist alive in Europe now than Javier Marias?” For me, I guess the answer is yes