Between eternities and other writings

Review by Booklist Review

Internationally renowned for his dozens of novels and books of nonfiction (Thus Bad Begins , 2016), Marías has penned weekly newspaper columns in Spain for the past quarter century. This collection has been curated largely from pieces that had already been translated for publication in the U.S., and it includes just shy of 50 short entries, divided into 5 categories: autobiography, urban anatomies, literary matters, the cinema, and miscellaneous reflections. Throughout, Marías is accessible and engaging, limiting most pieces to no more than a few pages and spanning topics as disparate as Shakespeare, the shooting at Virginia Tech, and Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. One of the most enchanting pieces is an extended investigation of Venice, in which Marías encounters the city in the manner of a flaneur, observing and analyzing the watery passages up close. In its attention to detail and sophisticated intelligence, this compendium resembles Andrés Neuman's How to Travel without Seeing (2016), and it may serve as a less politically charged and more progressively minded counterpart to Mario Vargas Llosa's Sabers and Utopias: Visions of Latin America (2018).--Diego Báez Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Spanish novelist Marías (While the Women Are Sleeping) draws from 20 years of weekly newspaper columns to assemble a collection that is often funny, sometimes wise, and always thought provoking. The essays tackle approachable themes with élan and even bombast, as when he declares that all cities are either "boastful" like Madrid, or "conceited" like New York, which "attracts [visitors] by cultivating an ever closer resemblance to the preconceived image one has of it." In "The Invading Library," he describes how his childhood struggles to find space to play amid stacks of his parents' books resulted in his fondness for literature, as well as a "lack of respect for anyone who writes, myself included... individuals who partially soured my childhood and invaded the territory occupied by my thrilling games." But he also writes more emotionally, such as when reflecting on "the pain caused when something ends" while observing his friends mourn their children growing up and leaving home. Marías says that he writes like he reads, and the same way life is lived-without knowing what is going to happen in the end. This open-minded, playful approach permeates his delightful essays. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Portrait of the artist as a well-traveled sophisticate, unsentimental littrateur, and cranky film critic.Very little gets past the narrators of Maras' recent novels, The Infatuations (2013) and Thus Bad Begins (2016).They're onlookers, life's minor characters, bearing detailed witness to a much bigger story than their own. The author proves to be a similarly absorbed and intelligent noticer in this collection of essays and newspaper columns from the past few decades, albeit one sometimes boxed in by a tight space. Although there are longer essays where he flourishes, the pieces often feel a little claustrophobic, and many end when he's just getting going. Early in the book, Maras keeps himself (and readers) amused writing about family history or Venice, a city whose residents live in a world unto themselves. "Their indifference and lack of curiosity about anything other than themselves and their ancestors," he writes, "has no equivalent in even the most inward-turning of villages in the northern hemisphere." The author is at his best writing about books and movies, despite a certain reactionary streak. He takes joy in deriding a profession divided between the self-destructive and self-absorbed. His own idea of an artist-hero is The Leopard author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who spent his last days reading rejection slips for his only novel. Maras also lets us in on his own writing process: "I force myself to be ruled by what I have already written, and allow that to determine what happens next." As a cineaste, he's decidedly old-school; he worships the Western, adores Ann-Margret, venerates It's a Wonderful Life and (his favorite) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. He may be the only critic alive who believes the 1970s were "the worst decade in the history of cinema." A lively collection, on the whole, from a man of the world who is most comfortable on his own turf. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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