A review by trin
Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico by Javier Marías
4.0
If you float around in certain semi-pretentious bookish circles, Javier Marías is one of those names you hear tossed around, usually coupled with a statement like, “is going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature!” As pretentious as I'm sure I myself can be at times, a statement such as this is actually not likely to make me rush out and want to read a writer's work. The Nobel Prize committee and I do not seem to have terribly similar tastes. Do I need to go off again about how much I hated [b:Blindness|2526|Blindness|José Saramago|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1161054077s/2526.jpg|3213039]? No, I don't think I do.
So this guy Marías: I was suspicious. Especially because the previous work of his we'd carried was his epic [b:Your Face Tomorrow|254351|Your Face Tomorrow Fever And Spear|Javier Marías|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173169866s/254351.jpg|516776], which I've heard described as “1,000 pages detailing 10 minutes of espionage.” Further, when I peeked at the first volume's first page, it seemed to consist of a single paragraph and some infinitely long sentences. Not really my cuppa.
But then Bad Nature arrived, and it was of a much more manageable size, and it had an amusing subtitle (or With Elvis in Mexico). I opened it up and yup, there were those long, twisty sentences again, but suddenly I found them addictive and compelling—they grabbed me like an undertow and dragged me into this bizarre, hilarious, and wonderfully dark tale of Elvis' Spanish translator and the scary shenanigans he and the King get up to in Mexico while shooting a film. This short little book really is like a whirlpool: it's exhilarating to find yourself sucked in, tossed around—narrowly avoiding some sharp rocks—and then chucked back out again. I resort to metaphor because a large portion of the joy of this story is discovering it for yourself, being surprised by it. I for one was not expecting such humor and verve. If they're at all like this, then 1,000 pages detailing 10 minutes of espionage do not sound at all bad to me. Hell, go ahead and throw in that Nobel Prize.
So this guy Marías: I was suspicious. Especially because the previous work of his we'd carried was his epic [b:Your Face Tomorrow|254351|Your Face Tomorrow Fever And Spear|Javier Marías|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173169866s/254351.jpg|516776], which I've heard described as “1,000 pages detailing 10 minutes of espionage.” Further, when I peeked at the first volume's first page, it seemed to consist of a single paragraph and some infinitely long sentences. Not really my cuppa.
But then Bad Nature arrived, and it was of a much more manageable size, and it had an amusing subtitle (or With Elvis in Mexico). I opened it up and yup, there were those long, twisty sentences again, but suddenly I found them addictive and compelling—they grabbed me like an undertow and dragged me into this bizarre, hilarious, and wonderfully dark tale of Elvis' Spanish translator and the scary shenanigans he and the King get up to in Mexico while shooting a film. This short little book really is like a whirlpool: it's exhilarating to find yourself sucked in, tossed around—narrowly avoiding some sharp rocks—and then chucked back out again. I resort to metaphor because a large portion of the joy of this story is discovering it for yourself, being surprised by it. I for one was not expecting such humor and verve. If they're at all like this, then 1,000 pages detailing 10 minutes of espionage do not sound at all bad to me. Hell, go ahead and throw in that Nobel Prize.