While the Women are Sleeping
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Celebrated as one of the greatest writers of his time, Javier Marías is best known for his spy trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow, which has been compared to Proust and hailed as one of the great modern European novels. In his first short story collection for fifteen years, he brings together tales which span his entire writing career : haunting tales from the very edges of life.
An obscenely fat man obsessed with his much younger lover endlessly videotapes her every move, a ghost is condemned to repeatedly resign from his job, and a man of impeccable refinement meets his doppelganger at a work dinner, resulting in ghoulish life changes for both men.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These 10 stories underscore Marias's mastery of the surreal and evasive, but nobody will confuse this sampler of leftover stories with the author's best work. In the satisfying title story, an unnamed narrator, lying on the beach with his wife, can't stop speculating about the lives of another pair of beach goers: a much older man and a beautiful young woman named In s. He eventually befriends the man, Alberto Viana, who confesses a desperate obsession with In s, but Alberto's story doesn't satisfy the narrator, as it doesn't jibe with his invented scenario. The other longish story, "The Resignation Letter of Se or de Santiesteban," follows a young teacher named Derek Lilburn, whose new post at a prestigious school is jeopardized when he can't accept the existence of the story's title character, a benign ghost. Most of the rest of the stories feel under-developed, like sketches inspired by a clever idea, from doppelg ngers to being stuck on an elevator. Marias (the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy) is a brilliant stylist and formidable intellect, but this haphazard collection does little to further his reputation.
