'A Heart So White' by Javier Marías
A Heart So White was first published in 1992, albeit in Spanish and with the title Corazón tan blanco. The English edition came along in 1995 courtesy of Margaret Jull Costa, an accomplished translator of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American literature who has previously translated the work of Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago. And while we’re on the subject, Javier Marías is himself a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors such as Joseph Conrad and Laurence Sterne. Right, that’s translation exhausted, now let’s discuss A Heart So White itself.
The book’s title is taken from a line in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a line which also introduces the text:
‘My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.’
This sets the tone for what is to come. A Heart So White opens with a long, looping description of a newlywed woman named Teresa Aguilera (no relation to Christina) shooting herself in the heart in the middle of a family meal. We are then treated, or subjected to (delete according to your disposition) a vivid account of her father trying to rouse her in spite of her serious injuries: 'He turned his back not only on him and on the others but also on his daughters, the one still alive and the one he still couldn’t bring himself to believe he was dead and, with his elbows still resting on the edge of the sink and his forehead cupped in his hands, he began to vomit up everything he’d eaten including the piece of meat he’d just swallowed whole without even chewing it. His son, the girls’ brother, who was considerably younger than the two daughters, went over to him, but all he could do to help was to seize the tails of his father’s jacket, as if to hold him down and keep him steady as he retched, but to those watching it seemed more as if he were seeking help from his father at a time when the latter couldn’t give it to him.’
Years later, the mystery of Teresa’s suicide fascinates another young newlywed named Juan. Juan’s father was married to Teresa before he married Juan’s mother (who also happens to be Teresa’s sister) meaning that the late Teresa is effectively Juan’s aunt, though he never knew her. As Juan gradually learns the truth about Teresa’s tragic death he begins to question everything around him, including whether or not he wants to know exactly what happened that day. As I read A Heart So White I found myself frantically underlining certain passages, so accurate and expertly drawn are Juan’s observations. Here is an example: ’…it’s odd how the features of those who no longer see us and whom we can no longer see become blurred, out of anger or absence or attrition, or how they become usurped by their photographs fixed for ever on a particular day, my mother, for example, isn’t wearing her glasses, the reading glasses she tended to wear rather too often in her latter years, she’s remained fixed in the picture I’ve chosen of her when she was twenty-eight years old, a woman younger than I am now, her face calm and a slightly resigned look in her eyes, which she did not, I think, normally have, her eyes were usually smiling like those of my Havana-born grandmother, her mother.’
Allow me to apologise if I seem to be 'padding’ this review of A Heart So White with large passages, but Javier Marías is such a beautiful and unusual writer that I simply cannot help but quote at length. The above extract is one that I had to go back and reread several times just to make sure that I had captured every nuance, every little quirk, and it is this need to double back and read again that makes A Heart So White so very unique. It isn’t a 'page turner’ by any means, not in the traditional sense at least, but for better or worse you will find yourself really connecting with the text. Marías’s disregard for full stops may take some getting used to, but the effect of all those long, looped sentences is that you feel unable to drag your eyes away from the page. It was only recently that I discovered the work of Javier Marías, and now that I know better I will be sure to read more of it.
This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in February 2013.