Review of : Your Face Tomorrow Vol. One (Fever and Spear)

I have not read either Sebald, Proust, or Henry James. All three are frequently cited from discussing Marias.

This is the first volume of a larger novel by Marias. It's hard to say whether I'll read the other two installments. I might as well. I enjoyed this one, so why not keep going?

This is not a spy novel. At least, not yet anyway. There are elements of the spy novel and the principle character becomes engaged in spy-type interrogation (though merely as an observer and interrupter) but it's not nearly as plot driven as a spy novel, so don't think James Bond.

It's a lot of internal pondering. And really that's the best part about the narrative, though I could see why some might find that boring. And honestly, sometimes it was a little boring but Marias, somehow, kept me interested. Some passages were downright awesome, these little vignettes, stories within stories, and that is where Marias is at his best, rather than ruminating on various topics of truth, language, and silence.


"No, I should never tell anyone anything, nor hear anything either." pg. 13

"When you're young, as you know, you're in a hurry and always afraid that you're not living enough, that your experiences are not varied enough or rich enough, you feel impatient and try to accelerate events, if you can, and so you load yourself up with them, you stockpile them, the urgency of the young to accumulate scars and to forge a past, it's odd that sense of urgency." pg. 99

"Chavez led an attempted coup once, if I remember rightly. He conspired with his troops and rose up against an elected civilian government. True, it may have been a corrupt and thieving government, but then what government isn't nowadays, they handle far too much money and are more like businesses than governments, and businessmen want their profits. So he couldn't really complain if he was ousted. The Venezuelan people are another matter. They might. Except that there seem to have been quite a few complaints already about this leader whom they elected by popular acclaim. Being elected doesn't immunise a leader against becoming a dictator." pg. 199

"Everything has its moment to be believed, however unlikely or anodyne, however incredible or stupid." pg. 349