Javier Marias The Infatuations

Annotation

"The Infatuations" is a metaphysical murder mystery and a stunningly original literary achievement by Javier Marias, the internationally acclaimed author of "A Heart So White" and "Your Face Tomorrow". Every day, Maria Dolz stops for breakfast at the same cafe. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren't there, and she feels obscurely bereft. It is only later, when she comes across a newspaper photograph of the man, lying stabbed in the street, his shirt half off, that she discovers who the couple are. Some time afterwards, when the woman returns to the cafe with her children, who are then collected by a different man, and Maria approaches her to offer her condolences, an entanglement begins which sheds new light on this apparently random, pointless death. With "The Infatuations", Javier Marias brilliantly reimagines the murder novel as a metaphysical enquiry, addressing existential questions of life, death, love and morality. "The Infatuations" is an extraordinary, immersive book about the terrible force of events and their consequences. "I am greatly impressed by the quality of Marias' writing ...he uses language like an anatomist uses the scalpel to cut away the layers of the flesh in order to lay bare the innermost secrets of that strangest of species, the human being".