Los enamoramientos - Javier Marías

Los enamoramientos opens with the narrator describing in detail a couple she used to watch every morning at a cafe before she started work at the office of a nearby publishing house. (The later realisation that it is a female comes as a surprise when you are used to the observational voice of the author as Juan Deza in Tu rostro mañana). María Dolz sees Luisa and Miguel Desvern (or Deverne) as the perfect couple, immaculately turned out, classic in their style and manner, but not ostentatious. It's a little daily ritual that amuses her to observe, but at the time of her "pequeño estímulo matutino" she was unaware of their names, any kind of acquaintance restricted to merely visual observation with a vague nod of acknowledgement, so it takes a while to associate the newspaper report of a man killed in a knife crime with the murder of Deverne.

Unlike a typical novel that would explore the underlying motivations or even randomness of the murder (a carpark attendant with mental health problems who in a case of mistaken identity believed that Miguel Deverne was involved in a gang that had led his daughters into prostitution), María and Marías explore the aftermath, the psychology, the impact of the loss on the other half of the Perfect Couple. María approaches Louisa at the café some months later and is invited to their home, where Luisa tells her the profound impact it has had in her, how she struggles to deal with it. As ever with Marías, it's exhaustive and fascinating in how he considers every angle.

Even hypothetical, or primarily hypothetical at least as far as María is concerned up to this point. The end of part one of the book involves a long imagined discussion between Deverne and his friend Javier Díaz-Varela, who María meets that night at Luisa's house, to look after his wife and children should anything happen to him. Obviously Marías takes longer to explain what this entails, and it's all a bit overblown, but it's all part of María's image of the Perfect Couple, that he would ensure that his wife is looked after in any situation, even in his death. It also blinds her to what might be the truth, which comes along later. The truth in Los enamoramientos however lies in a mist of imagined possibilities, and it's surely not insignificant that this lies in the relationship that develops between 'Javier' and 'María'.

That develops in Part II in a chance encounter with Díaz-Varela, who ruminates and expostulates in the same manner and same voice as everyone else in a Javier Marías novel. But then it is a Marías novel and you are reading it to see where it takes you. Here we are dealing with the impact of a sudden unexpected violent death - "Qué fácil resulta la esfumación de alguien" - (not unlike the impact that death in the Spanish Civil War has on other figures in other Marías books), and everything stems from that, from consideration of life, death, what we leave behind, our relation with time and history, the acts that define us, the present erasing the past bit by bit. Yes, it's an intellectual exercise, but it explores the nature of living in an exhaustive manner, taking in literary references (Macbeth again, as in Corazón tan blanco), also Balzac's Le Colonel Chabert, where the dead have no place among the living, and the idea of summary justice around Milady in The Three Musketeers.

Los enamoramientos is entitled 'The Infatuations' in its English language translation, which as something of an Anglophile who lived and worked as a lecturer in Oxford and for the BBC, Marías must have considered (thoroughly) as the best translation for the meaning of the title, which would translate more closely as 'The falling in loves', or The occasions of falling in love'. And he indeed weaves several such situations together. María falls for Díaz-Varela, who rather than being the protector of Luisa, as she imagines in her invented request from Miguel, she comes to believe is in love with Luisa and waiting, possibly hopelessly, for a sign from her. Or so she imagines, as again there is a lot of hypotheticals and imaginary conversations ("los deben de pensar algo parecido") around this taking flight due to half-heard discussion in DV's apartment.

It feels a little formulaic, frustratingly so for at least the first half of the book, seeming to have been written to the Marías template with no real inspiration this time and few original ideas or references. There's the contact with death, a contemplation of how it fits in with literary experience, letting it flow from there with a little mystery added, but precious little real world context this time. Even the literary references are tenuous with few of the usual fascinating insights arising out of juxtapositions and parallel events that you would expect to find. Literally almost nothing conventional happens in the first half of the book. Desverne is killed and thereafter ("she should have died hereafter" - Macbeth) Los enamoramientos is like an essay on the implications of losing, replacing a loved one, the nature of being alive and the nature of being dead. And then halfway through, as you are expecting a further twist, an overheard conversation that it would be better not hearing - another Marías feature - brings some drama back in. And a lot more hypotheticals.

One other element that is consistent with other Marías works is the difficulty of knowing the truth, and learning to live with what we cannot know. Indeed, sometimes it is better not to know. ("La tentación de oír no se resiste, aunque nos demos cuenta de que no nos conviene") The ideas that María comes up in the second half of the book might seem fanciful, inspired by her own imagination and experience, but Díaz-Varela’s story also sounds implausible. Or the truth might lie somewhere in-between or both might believe their version true. There is undoubtedly a thread of truth in there, but it takes on a different meaning and colour based on how we each perceive it and how we choose to rationalise it. ("La verdad no es nunca nítida, sino que siempre es maraña"). It's impossible to encapsulate every possibility, every passing thought and connection, but it's fun territory for an author, particularly this one, to explore. 

Not so much fun for the reader. There are interesting philosophical questions raised by Los enamoramientos and it could perhaps be seen as not so much a standalone novel with characters and drama as much as a meditation on one aspect that forms part of a bigger picture across the author's oeuvre of which Tu rostro mañana must now been seen in the light of the author's untimely death as perhaps the central piece of his work. I'm not sure if it's the unconvincing female first person voice (I see Marías as having a very traditional almost conservative old-school Spanish male voice) or whether the meditations are just too interiorised this time and the mystery unconvincing, but for whatever reason, there's just not enough here to make the slog through the book worthwhile.

Reading notes: Los enamoramientos by Javier Marías was first published in Spain in 2013, and translated into English as 'The Infatuations'. I read the Spanish edition of the book from Alfaguara in Kindle edition.