REVIEW: Your Face Tomorrow 1, by Javier Marías

Spanish writer and translator Javier Marías’ Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear (the first volume of a novel in three parts) came to me trailing its own clouds of glory. Lucinda, my beloved bibliotherapist over at Mr. Bs Emporium of Reading Delights, sent it to me calling it a cross between Proust and John Le Carré. The blurbs on the book itself (I have the British edition) are of the kind that are so emphatic in their appreciation that they couldn’t be anything but honest. “Nothing will stop me from devouring all Marías’s previous books” writes on critic, while another declares: “The next thing Marías deserves is the Nobel Prize”. Obviously, my expectations were quite high. Surprisingly, they were satisfied.

This is the novel's UK paperback cover (published by Vintage). It fits with the mood of the book much better than the US cover, especially since motorcycles do not feature in the novel...

Part of the novel’s charm emerges from its pure originality, which is also the reason why it cannot disappoint. Cross between Proust and Le Carré is right; Marías creates his own genre with Your Face Tomorrow — a plotless, murky universe of espionage, Oxford Dons, wartime tales, and undercover agencies. Even that could be déjà-vu, I suppose, if it wasn’t for the added element of Marías’ distinct style. The author is not showing off, he’s having fun. He’s writing from his guts, letting his pen go wherever it wants — or so it seems, because, in the dark work of Your Face Tomorrow, it is essential that you conclude your trajectories, and Marías always concludes his trajectories. This is no easy feat in a novel of digressions, as this one is; the story advances slowly, surely, but the structure of the narrative is built up like Russian dolls, with bits of story fitting into one another. There’s simply nothing quite like it. 

The story itself is about a Spaniard called Jacques Deza, the narrator, who is approached by a strange man called Bertram Tupra during a party hosted by a friend they have in common in Oxford. Tupra, it turns out, is the head of a special agency whose job it is, through the work of skilled, hand-picked agents, to conjecture large amounts of information about people by observing them closely for a very short time — things about them you could only find out if you’d known them for years. Deza is specifically chosen because he has this rare gift himself, a kind of instinctive judgement, the ability to know people incredibly well just by watching them, and begins to work for Tupra, watching videos and observing interviews with all sorts of people in order to find out how they would act when faced with a hard dilemma, if they are to be trusted, and what their values are. The larger purpose of this task remains a mystery, at least in this volume. 

Yet, the book is also about a lot more than that. Two of its characters were inspired by real people the author knew well. The first is Sir Peter Russel, who becomes Peter Wheeler in the story, a professor of Hispanic History at Oxford, a perfectionist and a hedonist of sorts, with a past as a spy for the MI5 and MI6 in the 1930s and 40s. (You can read the fascinating obituary of Professor Sir Peter Russell here to get a sense of the richness of the character). Through him and the party he hosts in Oxford, Marías cleverly explores the aura of this mythic university and the quirky characters who inhabit it (as he did in his 1992 novel All Souls), as well as the secret history of so many Oxford pre-war graduates who were hired as spies by the British government. The author’s own father also finds his way into the novel as the narrator’s father, a journalist during the Spanish Civil War who was imprisoned after Franco’s victory on the basis of lies told by a treacherous friend. 

Fever and Spear is a masterpiece: an intellectual thriller, an introspective page turner, a narrative experiment which burns its own unassuming, singular path through contemporary literature. Only a full school year and an undergraduate thesis will stop me from reading the other two volumes of Marías’ Your Face Tomorrow.

Javier Marías. Photo taken from Conversational Reading.

My Favourite Bookstore

Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, in Bath. Everything an independent bookshop should be.

There’s a fun irony in the way I discovered Mr. B’s Emporium of reading delights: half by chance and half by plan. I knew about it before coming to England, having come across an article about it in The Guardian’s Best Bookshops feature last year. The founder, Nic Bottomley, wrote a blog on The Guardian’s website called Diary of an independent bookshop, from 2006 to 2008. But the truth is, I’d completely forgotten about it by the time I fell upon the store by chance last December, huddled as it is in one of Bath’s back alleys. I was doing some Christmas shopping in Bath with G. and, seeing a bookshop sign, we stopped (we always stop when we see a bookshop) and peered inside. The quirky name and purple logo seemed familiar, but it took me a few minutes to click. I became very excited when I did. G. and I went in and spent a delightful hour or so browsing its shelves.

At first, Mr B’s looks and feels like any other independent bookshop: cream-coloured shelves stacked with great titles (lots of novels, lots of art books upstairs, interesting non-fiction, no commercial sludge), the staff is friendly but quiet, the space is small and charming, the bestseller wall features lots of staff picks and a more than decent number of translations. But as you spend more time in the shop, you get the feeling that this is an altogether different kind of bookshop. For instance, there’s a bath, downstairs, (perhaps a reference to the city’s name?) which serves as a fixture to show off new and interesting titles. The wallpaper in the staircase is pages cut out of a Tintin album. Upstairs, there’s a jug of water, mugs, and nice armchairs, which invited you to read and relax — it’s called the bibliotherapy room. Tucked in a corner, a small door leads into a tiny wardrobe called the reading booth, where you can go isolate yourself from the world and treat yourself to some special time with a good book.

It doesn’t stop there. All the staff at Mr B’s are also genuine book lovers, on a mission to get you reading something engaging and different. Ask them about any of the books they have; chances are, they’ll have read it — if not, they’ll have something interesting to say about it. There’s a book you’re looking for? If they don’t have it, they’ll gladly recommend something else that may suit your taste. Plus, they know how to maximize their knowledge: you can buy something called A Year of Reading Delights (something G. gave me for my birthday), meaning a consultation period with one of Mr B’s bibliotherapists, who then hand picks and sends a book to you every month for a year. The books are sent beautifully gift-wrapped in brown paper, string, and an elegant wax seal. They also sell a Reading Spa Treatment, which entails coffee and cake, a long chat with with Mr B too discuss your taste and what’s new and good in the world of books, reserved time in the reading booth, £40 worth of books, and a bag of goodies.

Yes, there’s more (these guys are the best, I tell you). Mr B’s hosts great books events with renowned authors, they have their own “bookshop band”, they manage a fun blog (Mr B’s Blog of Bloggy Delights), and they organize two weekly book groups, which are completely free, and every christmas they publish a small catalogue of wonderful, hand-picked book recommendations. Unsurprisingly, Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights has just been crowned Britain’s Independent Bookshop of 2011. Check out their website, and if you’re in Bath any time soon, remember to stop by. You won’t regret it!

This is one of the gift-wrapped books Mr B's sent me as part of my Year of Reading, with a personal message on a Penguin's postcard!