jeremy's Reviews > Tomás Nevinson: A novel

a foolish childhood superstition, an insuperable consequence of my old-fashioned upbringing, although perhaps in 1997 it didn't seem quite so old-fashioned as it does in this idiotic, unscrupulous century that is blithely casting aside our beliefs, one by one, and, even worse, our ability to reason.

completed in late 2020, some two years before his passing, tomás nevinson is a fitting swan song from the late spanish master. marías's final work — "not so much a continuation as a 'companion piece'" to his previous novel, berta isla — is another excellent literary spycraft thriller, revisiting themes, settings, and characters which appear across several of his prior books. reading marías always feels like being under the spell of an author working at the peak of his craft and it's no different in this ultimate outing, wherein he conveys one more compelling story in marvelous, artful prose while musing upon the contradictory mess of being human.

r.i.p. one of the all-time greats

in a world of light, frivolous people, of ambitious or solemn or fanatical people, it's well-nigh impossible to find anyone serious and responsible, someone who isn't trying to make her way greedily through the world, nor to change it from top to bottom, nor to prosper and grow endlessly rich, someone who puts up with the world without making a great fuss, but, at the same time, pays proper attention, trying to understand how the world functions, in the certain knowledge that it's impossible to escape the world's mutable but eternal functions. all we can do is observe it, step aside and pass by unnoticed, so that it doesn't swallow us down like the sea's dark throat, so that we don't go the same way as those who die only at the very moment of their death. because, believe me, such people resist with all their strength until that strength abandons them, and only then to they desist.

*translated from the spanish by margaret jull costa (saramago, pessoa, de queirós, vila-matas, atxaga, cardoso, et al.)