Spybrary's man in Station L (Northern Sector) author Andy Onyx slipped us this brush pass review of Javier Marias‘s thriller Your Face Tomorrow: Fever And Spear Indeed, remarkably little actually happens in Fever and Spear -- but Marías cloaks enough in mystery to make for a sense of suspense throughout.

Deza's duties, when he finally starts working for the secret service, mainly involve translating and sharing his impressions of conversations and interrogations. The third story is a mystery involving the disappearance of a (real) Spanish Communist and the assassination of Deza's uncle during the Spanish Civil War. These events are also linked to the unexplained betrayal of his father in Franco Spain. Much is made of the connection with the James Bond figure of Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love, in which book there appear to be significant references to at least the first event. Do you agree, or disagree with Andy? Come and let us know your thoughts on the Spybrary fans community. Your Face Tomorrow Fever And Spear by Javier Marias Cok ilginc bir kitap. Kabaca, gelismis gozlem yetenegine sahip bir adamin gizli istihbarattaki deneyimlerini anlatiyor. Ama konu kitabin cok az bir kismini olusturuyor gibi. Tarihi olaylar hakkindaki yorumlar, kisiler hakkindaki gozlemler ilk sayfadan son sayfaya kadar cok yogun. Bu kadar cok sübjektif paragrafin toplandigi baska bir kurgu okudugumu hatirlamiyorum. Kitap boyunca konu tam olarak neydi hissinden kurtulamiyorsunuz, Deza ve Wheeler'in kimi nasil yargiladigina cok genis yer verilmis. Bir gazetecinin deneme kitabi olacakken kurgu olmus gibi. Beneath Dance and Dream, one feels, is a medieval view of the world being subtly urged upon us, though it is in no sense religious. There remains in Jaime, right beside his taste for the lingerie of the 50s, a longing for courtliness, which, observed today, might save us from some of the worst aspects of ourselves. On the other hand, a knowledge of history makes Jaime grimly aware of the venality and violence rising to the surface of our lives now. And in this most beautifully tapped ancient vein of horror, Marías scales another peak, that of a deep, almost shamefully exciting lyricism of threat. Keeping an eye on that arch-enemy of his, who is about to snort coke in the "cripples' toilet" of a London nightclub, a place where violence of the fist or the gun might be expected, a sword, a huge menacing sword of the past, is produced: "It is the sword that caused most deaths throughout most centuries - it has killed at close quarters ... face to face with the person killed, without the murderer or the avenger or the avenged detaching himself from the sword while he wreaks his havoc and plunges it in and cuts and slices, all with the same blade which he never discards, but holds on to and grips even harder while he pierces, mutilates, skewers and even dismembers ... unlike something that can be thrown or hurled, the sword can strike again and stab repeatedly, over and over, again and again, each strike more vicious than the last ..."There is always more to come,...there is always a little more, one minute, the spear, one second, fever, another second, sleep and dreams - spear, fever, my pain, words, sleep and dreams - and then, of course, there is interminable time that does not even pause or slow its pace after our final end, but continues to make additions and to speak, to murmur, to ask questions and to tell tales, even though we can no longer hear and have fallen silent." It may be all that is left if one cannot trust anyone. Then, one cannot give oneself over to anyone or anything, a painting included. Gathering facts by those removed from self-intrusion either through will or an absence of self will theoretically lead to an assessment of who people are and who they will be in the future. Their face tomorrow. Finally, there is the tale of Wheeler, the emeritus Oxford don, who, like a character out of Le Carre's Smiley's People, is an old hand in the British Secret Service. Wheeler also has some problems with name-stability. He, too, has had some vague involvement with the Spanish Civil War but on whose side and to accomplish what end? I can’t believe I’m talking about Marias like this. If you are a true Friend you will stop me. Right? A lengthy section late in the novel focusses on the campaign in the Second World War against "careless talk" in Britain, where everyone was warned against revealing any information that might be of use to the enemy -- because you never knew who might be the enemy.

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale. To fall silent, yes, silent, is the great ambition that no one achieves not even after death, and I least of all, for I have often told tales and even written reports, more than that, I look and I listen, although now I almost never ask questions.But telling is also a matter of trust, and he has his doubts that anyone can be trusted: confidences are almost inevitably betrayed. In this brilliant dark novel, Marías has taken a central philosophical concern and set it before us in a new light, at once magical and terrifying in its implications for what we most value: for love, for justice and for the belief that we are who we say we are, when we think we are being honest." - John Burnside, Scotland on Sunday

So yeah, I suppose that if you write an actionless, multi-volume novel with a vulgarly high comma-to-period ratio and no actual events save a party and stuffy rich erudite people yakking, you must be consciously placing yourself in a specific European literary tradition, and inviting certain comparisons to some celebrated, endless plotlessness that has come before. So yes, to answer the question blazing in everyone's mind: if Marcel Proust were Spanish and writing a twenty-first-century spy novel, I suppose it might be at least vaguely like this. This first section of the novel, though marked only by an unnumbered quasi-chapter break, seemed to be preoccupied by experiments in sentence craft. Deza and his elderly mentor Wheeler, both from Oxford, are working for British Intelligence, due to their uncanny ability to see within a person something closer to their essence by their tics of behavior and gesture. All is recorded without the perturbance of emotion. This is deemed a necessary attribute for the post war British spies of this clandestine unit. Possibly a detriment in social life, their life is their work. Little else exists beyond it. Our life is to read about them.Its humour, too; aside from being one of the most poised and cultivated of fictional narrators, Jacques Deza is also one of the most amusing. His defiantly snobbish asides on the trashiness of our times are priceless, while the situations he finds himself in, however unpleasant, almost always have something farcical about them that keeps laughter in play along with horror. The narrator readily admits that he does not know much of what is going on. His is a process of continual discovery and analysis. Marías thereby embraces here that singular strength of the first-person narrator, unreliability. Though in Jacobo’s case it does not seem willful. In fact, there seems to be a forthright attempt to piece together what little he knows into a coherent whole. I found it enormous fun to follow his ideas as he stumbles on some dissonant fact or other and tries to reconsider how it might fit into the overarching puzzle before him. But the novel always remains just that: a fragment. This partial knowledge of course sets him up very neatly to be blindsided at some point further on. One should never tell anyone anything or give information or pass on stories or make people remember beings who have never existed or trodden the earth or traversed the world, or who, having done so, are now almost safe in uncertain, one-eyed oblivion. Telling is almost always done as a gift, even when the story contains and injects some poison, it is also a bond, a granting of trust, and rare is the trust or confidence that is not sooner or later betrayed, rare is the close bond that does not grow twisted or knotted and, in the end, become so tangled that a razor or knife is needed to cut it.