Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Maras
When Marta invites Victor to supper at her Madrid apartment while her husband is abroad on business, they have just recently been acquainted. Finally, Marta’s two-year-old son drifts off to sleep, and Victor and she retired to the bedroom. She becomes suddenly ill after taking off her clothes and mysteriously passes away in his arms. What is Victor to do? The answering machine’s compromising tape needs to be removed, right? Leave breakfast food out for the kid? These are only his first steps, but he quickly escalates the situation; unable to handle the darkness and the unknown, Victor jumps into the deep ocean. In this complex, peculiar, and wonderful book, Javier Maras—master Europe’s of secrets, of what lies reveal and truth may conceal—is on a solid foundation.
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Maras
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A new novel by Javier Maras is expected to be a big deal in Spain. On lists of Spanish fiction, he seems to rule. The 1990s classic Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, which is frequently cited as one of his best works, is an alternately beautiful and sombre account of adultery gone horribly wrong (the narrator, a ghostwriter, has dinner with a woman whose husband is away; she passes away in his arms from natural causes).
This book is fantastic. Of course, it’s not necessarily for everyone. At least in this novel, Marias writes in an engaging manner. It is dense and there is little breathing room (this may be due to the lack of full stops).
Instead of telling a straight-forward, from A to B plot, this book is openly a meditation on death. In the first scene, a guy meets a woman who passes away suddenly and, as far as he can determine, without any cause. He then thinks that people would believe he killed her through a succession of memories and theories. He questions what death is like. He muses early on in the book that perhaps her death was more embarrassing than tragic.
This is prevalent. He contacts the deceased woman’s relatives, pays them a visit, and gets to know the husband. It almost seems as though he wants to be discovered as having an affair with her. That’s pretty much all, however, I highly suggest reading this book. Sure, the wording is a little difficult to read. Although there is little to no plot, I believe this to be a really moving book.
