Thus Bad Begins is a hypnotising study of the infinitely permeable boundaries between private and public selves, between observer and participant, between the deceptions we suffer from others and those we enact upon ourselves.
'Thus bad begins and worse remains behind . . .'
As a young man, Juan de Vere takes a job that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Spain is just beginning to recover from Franco's long rule; its people are still struggling to free themselves from the snares of old secrets, lies and betrayals. Juan, too young to have known the worst of these years, finds himself drawn first by obligation and then by desire into the melancholy and unforgiving world of his employer, Eduardo Muriel.
Muriel is an urbane, celebrated filmmaker; his wife Beatriz a woman who slips through her husband's home like an unwanted ghost, finding solace in other beds. And on the periphery of this unhappy marriage stands Dr Jorge Van Vechten, a shadowy family friend implicated in unsavoury rumours that Muriel cannot bear to pursue, yet asks his new assistant, Juan, to investigate instead.
Juan is determined to satisfy Muriel's curiosity but soon has questions of his own - ones his employer has not asked and would prefer not to answer. Why does Muriel hate Beatriz? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? And what took place in those dark years after the Civil War? As he learns more about those he serves, Juan begins to understand the conflicting pulls of desire, power and guilt that govern all their lives - and his own.
Thus Bad Begins is a hypnotising study of the infinitely permeable boundaries between private and public selves, between observer and participant, between the deceptions we suffer from others and those we enact upon ourselves. In this portrait of a marriage and a nation haunted by guilt, Javier Marias captures all the shifting moral uncertainties that move beneath the surface of strangers' lives, under 'the somnolent, half-open eye of the cold, sentinel moon'.
About the Author
Javier Marias was born in 1951. His novels, short stories and essay collections have won a dazzling array of international literary awards. His work has been translated into thirty-four languages and more than five million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University and was recently nominated to be a member of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española. He lives in Madrid.
Industry Reviews
Publisher's description. From one of Spain's most acclaimed literary voices comes a rich and complex portrait of mutual deception, toxic love and cruel, lingering guilt. A youth caught in the middle of someone else's bitter marriage; a beautiful woman scorned; a man torn between conscience and will. Step into the melancholic, unforgiving world of Javier Marias. * Penguin *
Marias returns with another masterful tapestry of noir-ish twists and digressive cerebration * The Millions *
Elegant and beautiful, reminiscent of Proust... Magnificent * Daily Mail *
One of Marias's most enjoyable and accessible novels * Financial Times *
Marias is relentless in his pursuit of literary and psychological truth * Sunday Times *
Ferociously addictive, troubling [and] seductive... It works as high literary fiction, constantly picking apart our assumptions about story and fiction, but also offering good old-fashioned plot' * Independent *
A powerful study of history and memory from a literary giant * Sunday Times *
Easily as engrossing as anything he's written before... He manages to tread the tightrope between a very literary fiction and an utterly absorbing plot * The Times *
Alfred Hitchcock would be a home with Marias - but so too might Harold Pinter...It's a rare trick to pull off, this combination of suspense, analysis and metaphysics that aims both high at the brow and low at the gut * Prospect *
Almodovar-esque * New York Magazine *
On the page, he is expansive and unrestrained * New Yorker *
A major work from a global talent, Thus Bad Begins knits Hitchcockian suspense into a hypnotic tale crackling with erotic tension and political strife... The personal is political, as Marias' powerful, wide-ranging, yet curiously intimate novel attests * Minneapolis Star-Tribune *
Marias is a master of a kind of suspense that is rare in the modern novel * NY Times *
Erudite, strange, hypnotic and beautiful...One reads Marias for his ability to make the smallest parts of the world come alive * LA Times *
