"Así empieza lo malo" (Thus bad begins) is
the latest novel of Spanish writer Javier Marías. It was published in Spain on
23 September 2014 and will, most likely, be released in English in 2015.
Marías' novels have been published in 50 countries and translated into 40
languages. He is considered one of the best contemporary European writers; in
the last few years his name has been in the shortlist of candidates for the
Nobel Prize of Literature.
The title of the novel "Así empieza lo malo" (Thus bad begins) comes from Hamlet. Marías knows Shakespeare's work very well and has used his verses as titles for some of his novels. 'Thus bad begins' is the first half of a verse line from Act 3, scene 4 of Hamlet: 'Thus bad begins and worse remains behind' (Así empieza lo malo y lo peor queda atrás).
Other novels by Marías with verses from Shakespeare are: 'A Heart so White' (1992) from Macbeth, 'Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me'(1994) from Richard III, and 'Your Face Tomorrow' (2002, 2004, 2007) from Henry IV whose 1600 pages were published in separate 3 volumes.
Marías recognises Shakespeare's influence in his work: 'In my case, the presence of Shakespeare (in my books) is almost connatural'. And, as a source of inspiration "...someone like Shakespeare leaves many paths unexplored, many things just announced, strong images unexplained—all this invites you not to follow him but to be inspired. Shakespeare inspires me." (Paris Review. N. 190).
'Thus bad begins' is set in Madrid in the 1980's. Juan de Vere, the narrator, now a middle-aged man, remembers his first job as a personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, a cinema director. The story is told from the present time and the central plot develops around the unhappy marriage of Eduardo Muriel and Beatriz Noguera. Curiously, as it happened in his previous novel 'Los Enamoramientos' (The Infatuations) someone is spying on the private life of a married couple: in that novel, it was a woman, and in this one it is Juan de Vere himself.
The 1980's was the decade that saw democracy reinstated in Spain after the years of Franco's dictatorship. Franco had ruled the country unopposed, for almost 40 years, until his death in 1975, so when he died, the country was ready for change. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 transformed Spain into a Constitutional Monarchy, and the Amnesty Law passed in 1977, absolved the regime & its acolytes of any responsibility for crimes committed during the years 1936-1977.
So, for some people, there was nothing to fear, and changing sides, that is, moving from being a Franco supporter to a democrat, was not only possible but a straightforward & safe process. The euphemism of the time "changing jackets" (cambiar de chaqueta) conveyed this idea well. Some people, before mutating into instant democrats, did some nip and tuck to their biographies, hiding all that would not be considered appropriate in the newly born democracy; and so, you had some people who, with their faces freshly washed and a new jacket, could carry on with their privileged lives as if they were entitled to it by Divine Law.
I do not want to go into much detail about the plot of this novel but this is how Javier Marías summarized the book when it was released in Spain last year: “It is about the impunity and the arbitrarily of forgiveness, it is about how we can forgive some serious events while, at the same time, are not willing to forgive small misdeeds; it is about how we can't overlook small matters; it is about sexual desire and obstinacy in love, it's about desire as the engine that moves a person into action and how this can be done in a noble or an ignoble way."
© Imma Hilly, May 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment