Quizá ninguno haya visto su realidad invadida por la ficción como Javier Marías, ni a tantas personas comportarse como personajes suyos, ni se habrá diluido tanto entre sus propias páginas, ni se habrá convertido en el heredero de un reino legendario que sin embargo figura también en los mapas. Poco podría imaginar el autor de esta "falsa novela" que con su obra Todas las almas iba a poner en marcha un mundo que yacía dormido o que transitaba sólo por la Negra espalda del tiempo que suele estar oculta y no verse.

Non so...
Ho sempre questo strano problema nel leggere Marías.
Mi piace il suo modo di scrivere, mi piace seguire il filo delle sue infinite digressioni, anche se spesso finisco per perderlo. Ma quando poi arrivo alla fine rimango perplessa e non so dire se in realtà mi sia veramente piaciuto quello che ho letto.
In questo caso poi più che mai. Ci sono passaggi che mi sono goduta fino alla commozione, altri che mi sono sembrati solo inutilmente prolissi e vuoti.
Forse tre stelline sono poche... ma facendo il confronto con altre letture, quattro sarebbero state sicuramente troppe.
Ma nonostante questo, o forse proprio per questo, so che continuerò a leggere e poi ancora leggere Marías! ( )

Undoubtedly a five-star book but the fact that I only "really liked it" is due to all the historical references that bogged down for me, especially near the end. And that is no fault of the writer, it is I who am the culprit here. History is something I respect and take seriously, but in general it bores me and I sometimes fall asleep, especially involved with lectures in large halls. But I do have other good qualities enough that it is hoped would and will forgive me of my sins against historical fiction and those who write it. I did love the digressions and the threads JM developed throughout the book. There are several great reviews of this book written on goodreads by my "friends" that I implore anyone reading this paltry piece to visit soon after leaving my page here. I will be continuing on with my JM study after a brief respite in which I might catch my breath. ( )

Am I burning out on Marias? I hope not; 'The Infatuations' should be in my hands the day it comes out. But I found this much less gripping than his other works, for two connected reasons, that have a lot to do with my own prejudices, but those prejudices might also be your prejudices. So:

i) this book is filled with much clearer and therefore worse statements of writerly existentialism--you know the stuff. Life is meaningless, we tell ourselves stories in order to give life meaning but that never quite papers over the meaninglessness. How deep.
ii) I'm much more interested in fictional stories than non-fictional stories that replicate the themes and appearance of fictional stories. Some people prefer to read about 'real' people; I prefer to read books in which an author is more or less in control of the non-real people s/he moves around.

DBT is charming, certainly. There's a full cast of English eccentrics, one leading to another time after time. There are some very nice photos. There's a real sense of the detective story, as Marias tries to find out more and more about people who are randomly connected with his life. But the pay-off for his research--both intellectual and narrative--is pretty meager. Maybe that's because, as the narrator suggests, there might be a sequel to this, which would be good--I'd read a straight memoir by Marias with great interest. And there are some good bits here about the interaction between fiction and the 'real' world, particularly how the former can affect the latter.

DBT has many features of a Marias novel: the title taken from Shakespeare, and the play in question commenting on and being commented on by the novel; stories within the book as a whole commenting on each other in interesting ways; mini-essays; character sketches. I enjoyed all of those I've read. But I can only read about the difficulties of living with meaninglessness so many times before it becomes--worse than meaningless--boring and slightly insulting. Meaninglessness is only a problem if you insist on believing both that meaning can only be guaranteed by a transcendent x, and that there is no such x. Lop off either of those assumptions, and you'll be able to motor on quite comfortably. ( )

First, I recommending that you read Mike Puma's review, since he provides such a thoughtful and comprehensive picture of this novel. Mike's accomplishment is all the more impressive because of the unique style and approach Marías takes in this novel. Is he writing a memoir or a novel? Is he providing historical analysis based on primary documents, or presenting a fictional depiction of historical characters? What is real? What relationship do storytelling and narrative play in our constructing our past as well as our present? Marías purposively and brilliantly explodes genre boundaries as he plays with themes having to do with reality and fiction, and the difficulty in distinguishing between them.

In Dark Back of Time, Marías begins with a humorous, affectionate, and (sometimes) exasperated depiction of the reception of his novel [b:All Souls|1655608|All Souls|Javier Marías|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1330711132s/1655608.jpg|1650254], which many friends and former colleagues take to be a roman á clef based on Marías's time spent in Oxford University. As Marías repeatedly insists that the novel sprung mainly from his imagination, he moves from a discussion of his novel to examinations of minor historical figures who appeared in the novel, through the lens of myriad historical documents - newspaper articles, oral histories, written documentation, and photographs, among others.

As a historian, I especially appreciated Marías's treatment of historical sources, which he understands to be fictions in their own way, based on the very different perspectives and motivations of their creators. I've always loved it when authors present a scrapbook of sources, not tidied up neatly in a clear story (although that also has its place), but with all the loose ends, ambiguities, and contradictions in place. This love of complexity and nuance is part of what interested me in studying history in the first place. There is something so human and involving to me about all those ragged edges of the past. As Marías says, "facts in themselves are nothing, language cannot reproduce them just as any number of repetitions, with their sharp edges, cannot reproduce the time that is past or gone, or revive the dead who have already gone past us and been lost in that time. And at this point who knows what has become real and what has become fictitious." (330) The blurred lines between fiction and reality are complex, messy, part of being human.

Marías' approach to understanding the past has all the elements of complexity and nuance that I describe above. He notes the accretions of the past on the written word, as well as what we lose through death and the dimming of memory: "With the passage or loss of time, old books are no longer text and binding alone but also what their former readers have left in them over the years, marks, comments, exclamations, profanities, photographs, dedications or ex libris, a letter, sheet of paper or signature, a waterspot, burn or stain or simply their names, as the books' owners." (286) Marías also makes a place for what he refers to as the dark back of time - a place where events and nonevents converge, where paths not taken, brothers lost at a young age, and parallel lives still carry on, and can be recovered if we are open to them.

This book is very highly recommended for readers who are open to Marîas' creative, philosophical, lyrical, and personal approach. ( )