Tu rostro mañana 3. Veneno y sombra y adiós. (Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison and Shadow and Goodbye)

Reviewed by Carlos Rodríguez Martorell, Corona, NY -- Críticas, 11/15/2007

With this last installment to his vast trilogy Tu rostro mañana (“Your Face Tomorrow”), which he began in 2002, Spain’s leading novelist Marías has finally concluded his magnum opus. The wait has been worth it: this last book is the best—and longest—of the three. Jacques Deza, the narrator, recounts the end of his involvement with an obscure branch of England’s MI5 and his return to his native Madrid to confront the abusive lover of his estranged wife, Luisa. As in the previous novels, cruelty and treason during the Spanish Civil War are here explored through Deza’s conversations with his father (homage to the late philosopher Julián Marías, the author’s father). Deza’s ruthless boss, the spy Tupra, becomes more central in this volume. In Marías’s typical fashion, what happens in the novel is not as important as what the rambling narrator makes of it. Deza not only delves into long, meditative diversions on philosophical, historical, and moral issues but also pontificates about the inanities of modern life, berates his fellow countrymen, and scrutinizes the meaning, etymology, and possible translations of the words he uses and hears. The narrator’s tirades—often enthralling but also sanctimonious, repetitive, or banal—are as inherent to Marías’s style as his elusive structure of overlapped conversations. In the end, Marías’s long, elegant sentences succeed in winning over the most demanding reader. More than a trilogy, this is one novel divided into three parts, so that you have to read them all to understand the story fully. Likely one of the great literary endeavors of our times, this trilogy is highly recommended for bookstores and libraries with collections of contemporary fiction in Spanish.