airdog reviewed Tomás Nevinson by Javier Marías
Philosophical thriller
3 stars
It's quite strange to read. Nothing is more at the opposite of a thriller than philosophy. The result is weird, for instance there's a scene where he begins to kill her and that scene takes about 10 pages. The result being, of course, that before she actually dies he changes his mind. The sentences are very often as long as in a Proust writing which, you have to admit can certainly slow down dramatically the pace of the action. Yet the author obviously has a vast culture, citing authors from antiquity to modern times. And it's long, very long, about 700 pages. Not sure yet, probably will read another work by this author who apparently is well known internationally before posing a more assured verdict as to what I think.