Cómo puedo no conocer hoy Tu rostro mañana, el que ya está o se fragua bajo la cara que enseñas o bajo la careta que llevas, y que me mostrarás tan sólo cuando no lo espere? bu kitaba başlayacaksanız kesinlikle serinin en azından 2. kitabını elinizin altında bulundurun. ben kitabın ilk 100 sayfasını okuduktan sonra kitabın çok heyecanlı bir yerde biteceğini fark ettim ama aksiyon almam için çok geçti artık kfgddsj Por aquel entonces ya había comenzado a “cambiar de registro”, descubriendo nuevos tipos de literatura (nuevos para mí, quiero decir). En cierto modo era una especie de rebeldía adolescente, una forma de renegar de mis orígenes, aunque para ello tuviera que “traicionar” a mi autor más querido. Pero uno siempre vuelve a sus raíces y, tras leer recientemente Berta Isla y Así empieza lo malo, era el momento de sumergirme de nuevo en la inmensa Tu rostro mañana.

Finally, there is the tale of Wheeler, the emeritus Oxford don, who, like a character out of Le Carre's Smiley's People, is an old hand in the British Secret Service. Wheeler also has some problems with name-stability. He, too, has had some vague involvement with the Spanish Civil War but on whose side and to accomplish what end? With a gauntlet thrown at the reductionist bias of the Western mind and its hasty dismissal of such uncomputable forms of knowledge, he adds: Life is not recountable", Wheeler tells Deza, but the book focusses on these attempts to get at the crux of lives and people (something Deza appears to have a talent for). This novel is all diversion. Marías circles his subject not so much like a shark narrowing in on its prey as one hoping to conjure it out of thin water, and it is to the credit of the book that a fish, of some kind, seems to appear by the end." - Benjamin Markovits, Sunday Telegraph A little patience, in other words, is required of the reader, but it is amply rewarded. By the second volume all cylinders in its large and powerful engines are purring smoothly. And with this triumphant finale – the longest and best of all three – it becomes impossible to resist the thought that this deeply strange creation, with its utterly sui generis methods, its brilliant disquisitions on love and loss, its dark playfulness, may very well be the first authentic literary masterpiece of the 21st century.In the past he has studied literature and taught Spanish literature at Oxford, and his contemporary peers have been Professors of Spanish or English Literature there (Peter Wheeler and Toby Rylands, the latter now deceased). Spybrary's man in Station L (Northern Sector) author Andy Onyx slipped us this brush pass review of Javier Marias‘s thriller Your Face Tomorrow: Fever And Spear The narrator readily admits that he does not know much of what is going on. His is a process of continual discovery and analysis. Marías thereby embraces here that singular strength of the first-person narrator, unreliability. Though in Jacobo’s case it does not seem willful. In fact, there seems to be a forthright attempt to piece together what little he knows into a coherent whole. I found it enormous fun to follow his ideas as he stumbles on some dissonant fact or other and tries to reconsider how it might fit into the overarching puzzle before him. But the novel always remains just that: a fragment. This partial knowledge of course sets him up very neatly to be blindsided at some point further on. The first person narrator is Jacques Deza, a Spanish translator who has separated from his wife (Luisa) and two children, and who, at the beginning of the novel, works for the BBC, and later works as a translator for a British intelligence agency.

But telling is also a matter of trust, and he has his doubts that anyone can be trusted: confidences are almost inevitably betrayed. Nevertheless, he proceeds to do most of these things, and if he doesn't exactly spill his guts he is (or at least appears to be) fairly forthcoming. This begs the question: why write a review, when you have only finished 30% of the novel? How can you be sure that the first part is somehow representative or indicative of the whole, or the other parts? Yo suelo releer aquellos libros que he disfrutado o que me han dejado huella. Algunos han llegado a convertirse en una referencia para mí y es interesante comprobar que, con cada relectura, me dicen algo más, o algo distinto. Como decía Heráclito, “nadie puede bañarse dos veces en el mismo río.” Con otros títulos sucede lo contrario; no me convencieron, pero siento que les debo otra oportunidad. Este es el caso Tu rostro mañana: siendo Marías uno de mis escritores favoritos y esta novela su obra más ambiciosa y, de acuerdo con la mayoría de los lectores, la más lograda, debería haberse convertido de inmediato en uno de mis títulos de cabecera. Sin embargo, el primer tomo no me convenció, el segundo me aburrió y el último ni siquiera me lo terminé. Its humour, too; aside from being one of the most poised and cultivated of fictional narrators, Jacques Deza is also one of the most amusing. His defiantly snobbish asides on the trashiness of our times are priceless, while the situations he finds himself in, however unpleasant, almost always have something farcical about them that keeps laughter in play along with horror.Unlike The Man of Feeling the novel is lengthy and so Marias’s complex prose which often turns in on itself does cross over into being unreadable. En el fondo sólo nos interesa e importa lo que compartimos, lo que traspasamos y transmitimos. Queremos sentirnos parte de una cadena siempre, cómo decir, víctimas y agentes de un inagotable contagio.” Y aunque yo me cuento entre aquellos que prefieren no contar, entre los que raramente hablan de lo que sienten, de lo que sintieron, de lo que hicieron o les hicieron o harán, no por ello estoy a salvo. Siempre hay alguien para el que somos transparentes, siempre hay alguien que nos cale, que intuya lo que somos y lo que somos capaces de hacer y de no hacer y lo que podríamos llegar a hacer, alguien capaz de traer al presente nuestro “rostro mañana”. "Los individuos llevan sus probabilidades en el interior de sus venas, y sólo es cuestión de tiempo, de tentaciones y de circunstancias que por fin las conduzcan a su cumplimiento"Nosotros mismos podríamos ser ese alguien para otros, ser uno de los elegidos, de los "intérpretes de personas" o "traductores de vidas" o "anticipadores de historias", y así evitar la traición futura, la puñalada en la espalda, saber lo que a lo mejor no querríamos saber pues en el fondo odiamos el conocimiento y la certidumbre, e intuimos que “esa luz suspicaz, recelosa, interpretativa, inconforme con las apariencias y con lo evidente y llano” pueda encubrirnos la superficie, lo simple, nublarnos la visión de lo que no tiene doblez ni secreto y así convertirnos en nuestro propio dolor y nuestra fiebre. “Nos aburren la protección y la prevención y la alerta, y a todos nos gusta arrojar el escudo lejos y marchar ligeros blandiendo la lanza como un adorno.”Es más, nos aterra el precipicio de la equivocación, la posibilidad de lo improbable, la responsabilidad de lo visto y errado, y entonces el don del conocer se trastoca una vez más en maldición. ¿Se puede conocer hasta ese punto? ¿Podemos estar seguros del afecto presente, de la traición futura? ¿Se puede cambiar, se puede ser mañana en el que no se es hoy? Ateş ve Mızrak alt başlıklı ilk ciltte Tüm Ruhlar'ın isimsiz baş karakteri, Jacques Deza olarak daha yaşlı ve eşinden ayrılmış bir adam olarak Londra'ya geri dönüyor. Deza BBC'de çalışırken yine Tüm Ruhlar kitabından aşina olduğumuz Peter Wheeler sayesinde bir istihbarat grubu için çalışmaya başlıyor. Buradaki görevi işvereninin istediği kişilerin karakterlerini gözlemlemek ve analiz etmek. Hatta bundan fazlasını yapıyor Deza, insanların gelecekteki davranışlarını tahmin etmeye çalışıyor.

Marias jumps in right away through his main character Deza, can the truth be derived at from the gathering of facts rather than the circumlocutions of impressions. Does one, after memorizing all the detail and facts of a painting, aware of each brushstroke and its assimilation into the overall painting before us, capture the painting, its essence? A problem with this mode of viewing a painting is that it exists then only in the past or a presumptive future when the past will be recounted. One should never tell anyone anything or give information or pass on stories or make people remember beings who have never existed or trodden the earth or traversed the world, or who, having done so, are now almost safe in uncertain, one-eyed oblivion. Telling is almost always done as a gift, even when the story contains and injects some poison, it is also a bond, a granting of trust, and rare is the trust or confidence that is not sooner or later betrayed, rare is the close bond that does not grow twisted or knotted and, in the end, become so tangled that a razor or knife is needed to cut it.

Cok ilginc bir kitap. Kabaca, gelismis gozlem yetenegine sahip bir adamin gizli istihbarattaki deneyimlerini anlatiyor. Ama konu kitabin cok az bir kismini olusturuyor gibi. Tarihi olaylar hakkindaki yorumlar, kisiler hakkindaki gozlemler ilk sayfadan son sayfaya kadar cok yogun. Bu kadar cok sübjektif paragrafin toplandigi baska bir kurgu okudugumu hatirlamiyorum. Kitap boyunca konu tam olarak neydi hissinden kurtulamiyorsunuz, Deza ve Wheeler'in kimi nasil yargiladigina cok genis yer verilmis. Bir gazetecinin deneme kitabi olacakken kurgu olmus gibi. It’s all in the voice, and if its peculiar intellectual negligees don’t draw you deeper into Marias’ cranial boudoir (for rather traditional pleasures after all is said and done), then you’re left out in the cold, a cold many readers would probably rather be in anyway, and that’s understandable. It’s all in the voice, and its saturating verbal power is reminiscent of Sebald, like an endless stream of voice straight into your ear, or in your face. And as with Sebald this voice is so seemingly natural and so personalized that fiction has the illusion (or is it?) of blending into nonfiction. But unlike Sebald Marias is a game player, a bit of a prankster, though that quality of his is at the service of an urgency in this book, the pranksterism manifesting in a rarefied detachment within some self-absorbed inner cosmos and an insistence on exhausting every topic raised, almost every seed of every idea planted in every statement, like the author had given himself a challenge; it’s almost Oulipian! I can’t help it, Javier Marias’ voice seduces me. It’s a purely cerebral seduction, but still sexy in its smooth (& feverish) unspooling of its own explorations of itself inside my head. Admittedly, to actually read the whole of this book requires a seduction, and a willingness on the part of the reader to cede control of his/her own reading experience to the overwhelming, unrelenting voice; for this voice's self-love (a self-love that is also selfless) to be loved by another. Extremely hard to read, as every sentence is beautifully crafted but to the point of being over-written and elaborate, often piling on a series of repetitions; as an example (which could actually be referring to large parts of the book)

Once narrator Dezas starts his person-interpreting intelligence work in earnest the reader is confronted by a number of seemingly random descriptions of various persons unconnected to the larger narrative. The story is more about the little intelligence unit's ability to manufacture those profiles. It’s more about what the profiles say about the profilers. I believe the psychological term here is called “projection,” Freudian lingo that Marías never mentions. What are we led to think about the profilers by what they see in others? Remember, their work is all intuitive. They base their assumptions on nothing factual except the roughest biographical data. It’s a fascinating idea and it works though it makes for dense narrative. A beach read this is not.Has de tener presente que la mayoría de la gente es tonta. Tonta y frívola y crédula, no sabes hasta qué punto, una permanente hoja en blanco sin la menor huella ni resistencia, por mucho que te parezca saberlo no puedes saberlo bien, hasta qué punto, tú no has vivido guerras, espero que no te toquen. Deza and his elderly mentor Wheeler, both from Oxford, are working for British Intelligence, due to their uncanny ability to see within a person something closer to their essence by their tics of behavior and gesture. All is recorded without the perturbance of emotion. This is deemed a necessary attribute for the post war British spies of this clandestine unit. Possibly a detriment in social life, their life is their work. Little else exists beyond it. Our life is to read about them. Hoy se detesta la certidumbre: eso empezó como moda, quedaba bien ir contra ellas, los simples las metieron en el mismo saco que a los dogmas y las doctrinas, los muy ramplones (y hubo entre ellos intelectuales), como si todo fueran sinónimos. Una y otra vez se cuestiona la palabra, su significado, las diferencias que en los mismos se da entre distintos idiomas, la relevancia de aquello que tiene su palabra en uno pero no en otro, el hecho de que tanto lo que decimos como lo que nos decimos está influenciado por el propio idioma elegido o solo puede ser bien expresado en él; una y otra vez Shakespeare , una y otra vez los mantras de la novela, “No debería uno contar nunca nada”, “Nada de lo que hubo se borra jamás del todo”, “Todo tiene su tiempo para ser creído”, “A veces resulta imposible explicar lo más decisivo”, “Hoy se detesta la certidumbre”, “Uno olvida mucho más lo que escribe que lo que lee, si le va dirigido; lo que envía que lo que recibe, lo que dice que lo que escucha, cuando agravia que cuando es ofendido”…