Infatuations (Marias) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
For established fans, The Infatuations will be another welcome shipment of Marias; for new readers it is as good a place to start as any. Whatever else we may think is going on when we read, we are choosing to spend time in an author's company. In Javier Marias's case this is a good decision; his mind is insightful, witty, sometimes startling, sometimes hilarious, and always intelligent.
Edward St. Aubyn - New York Times Book Review


Mysterious and seductive; it’s got deception, it’s got love affairs, it’s got murder—the book is the most sheerly addictive thing Marias has ever written . . . Marias is a star writer in Europe, where his best-sellers collect prizes the way Kardashians collect paparazzi. He’s been hailed in America, too, yet he’s never broken through like Haruki Murakami or Roberto Bolaño. This should change with his new novel, The Infatuations, which is the ideal introduction to his work.
Fresh Air/NPR


The work of a master in his prime, this is a murder story that becomes an enthralling vehicle for all the big questions about life, love, fate, and death.
Guardian (UK)


A haunting masterpiece.... The lasting challenge to literature is to achieve a satisfying marriage between high art and the low drives of a simple plot. The Infatuations is just such a novel . . . Just as Macbeth is a thriller that’s also a great tragedy, The Infatuations is a murder story that’s also a profound story of fatal obsession.... Don Quixote was first published as long ago as 1620. I wouldn’t be surprised if The Infatuations soon acquired an equally devoted following.
Observer (UK)
 

Extraordinary.... Marias has defined the ethos of our time.
Alberto Manguel - Guardian (UK)
 

Absorbing and unnerving.... A labyrinthine exploration, at once thrilling and melancholy, of the meanings of one man’s death—and a vivid testimony to the power of stories, for good or ill, to weave the world into our thoughts and our thoughts into the world.
London Sunday Times


Marias shows that death is hardest on those left living.... With philosophical rigor, Marias uses the page-turning twists of crime fiction to interrogate the weighty concepts of grief, culpability, and mortality.... The novel’s power lies in its melding of readable momentum and existential depth...[as well as] clarity and digressive uncertainty; a novel that further secures Marias’s position as one of contemporary fiction’s most relevant voices.
Publishers Weekly


Marias turns a narrative about an apparently random homicide into a metaphysical inquiry fraught with ambiguity as accounts of the incident vary in their degree of accuracy and detail, a plot twist presents a questionable motive, and even the victim's name isn't certain.... [Maria's] fluid yet digressive style may not be to everyone's liking. When it comes to a novel exquisitely questioning the nature of fact and truth, however, this is a highly rewarding literary experience. —Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH
Library Journal


An apparently random street murder sparks musings on shades of guilt and the mutability of truth.... As always with Marías, there are no definitive answers, only the exploration of provocative ideas in his trademark style: long, looping sentences... that mimic the stuttering starts and stops of a restless mind.... Marias' rare gift is his ability to make this intellectual jousting as suspenseful as the chase scenes in a commercial thriller. He's tremendously stimulating to read.... Blindingly intelligent, engagingly accessible—it seems there's nothing Marías can't make fiction do.
Kirkus Reviews