Berta Isla

As good as anything I've read by Marías, this is a compelling, engaging and page-turning novel that covers a broad arc of history (from Franco to the Falklands) and asks a range of complex moral and philosophical questions. Although Marías draws heavily on classic authors, from Shakespeare through to T. S. Eliot via Dickens and Conrad, I found myself often thinking about the parallels between the style of Marías and that of Iris Murdoch. Both have a tendency to the verbose and prolix and take “real-world” structures as a device for philosophical considerations. That said, much of the propulsion within Berta Isla comes from the skill of Marías in crafting it as a spy novel, for the eponymous Berta is married to the enigmatic Thomas Nevinson, a man with multilingual talents, recruited by MI6. As such, the novel considers how we deal with both the “known” and “unknown” aspects of life, the present and the absent, the moral and the immoral. Both Berta and Thomas, however pragmatic their intentions, are inevitably changed by their experiences. Spying is draining, both physically and mentally, as is assuming one identity while simultaneously retaining and repressing your original one. Superb. 10 out of 10.

By Javier Marías