Synopsis
Victor leaves his married lover dead in bed when she expires while they make love. But her widower is sure someone was with her, and sets out to discover who it was. Meanwhile, Victor unexpectedly becomes profoundly uncomfortable with the secret he is keeping. When it was published in Europe, this Spanish novel won the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo and the Prix Femina du Meilleur Livre Etranger.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-10-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 311 pages | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 18.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
Marta invites Victor, whom she had met only a few days before, to dinner at her Madrid apartment while her husband is away on business. After Marta's two-year-old son finally falls asleep, the two retreat to the bedroom. As they start to undress, Marta is taken violently ill. Inexplicably, she dies. What is Victor, a stranger in a strange apartment, to do? He removes the tape, with its compromising messages, from the answering machine, puts some breakfast food on the kitchen table for the child, and leaves. While Marta's elderly father is disconsolate in the belief that his daughter died alone, the rest of the family is all too aware that someone was sharing her bed that night. Dean, the widower, is determined to find out who it was. All might have remained undiscovered, but Victor cannot endure living with shadows. Marias casts a knowing eye on the secrets that bring couples together and break them apart - the admissions that conceal, the lies that reveal - and the infinite capacity for self-deception in pursuit of love.
Published throughout Europe to widespread acclaim, TOMORROW IN THE BATTLE THINK OF ME is a masterfully crafted mystery, a subtle and complex novel of a man trapped by a terrible secret.
Marta invites Victor, whom she had met only a few days before, to dinner at her Madrid apartment while her husband is away on business. After Marta's two-year-old son finally falls asleep, the two retreat to the bedroom. As they start to undress, Marta is taken violently ill. Inexplicably, she dies.
What is Victor, a stranger in a apartment, to do? He removes the tape, with its compromising messages, from the answering machine, puts some breakfast food on the kitchen table for the child, and leaves.
While Marta's elderly father is disconsolate in the belief that his daughter died alone, the rest of the family is all too aware that someone was sharing her bed that night. Dean, the widower, is determined to find out who it was. All might have remained undiscovered, but Victor cannot endure living with shadows.
Marias casts a knowing eye on the secrets that brings couples together and break them apart--the admissions that conceal, the lies that reveal--and the infinite capacity for self-deception in pursuit of love.
Industry Reviews
"Javier Marias's eighth novel...is a marvel to behold but a muddle to read. What's marvelous is its structure: Marias has written a kind of inverted mystery, exposing the 'crime' in the opening pages and then spending the rest of the novel obfuscating what really happened....The resulting construction, intricate and delicate, is occasionally breathtaking but more often overtaxed by Marias's penchant for allusive detail."
New York Times Book Review - Liam Callanan (01/25/1998)
"Javier Marías writes with elegance, with wit and with masterful suspense, and yet for all this assurance, it is the profound ontological uncertainty at the heart of his work which makes it at once so unsettling and so true."
Times Literary Supplement - Michael Kerrigan (11/15/1996)
"My personal favorite among Marías's books is TOMORROW IN THE BATTLE THINK ON ME....It is a complex, centripetal whodunit about the reverberations of a sudden death....Marías ponders large philosophical themes, like the role of memory and morality in human affairs, by intertwining the individual in a larger picture....Its exposition is hypnotizing, and its plot plays tricks on us: It falsifies its routes by pushing to it denouement."
Nation - Ilan Stavans (11/19/2001)
| See an error? Submit a change request |
All rights reserved.
