Still Time to Die Tomorrow

When a writer chooses to express something in a particular way, all the other approaches he might have chosen are usually encouraged to disappear in the hope of creating an atmosphere of authority and precision. Javier Marías, the masterly Spanish novelist, follows the opposite policy and, even after he has filled a descriptive vacancy, continues to interview other candidates for the job. The rival formulations turn up one after another, in sub-clauses that offer everything from subtle qualification to flat contradiction. Here is the narrator of “The Infatuations,” Marías’s new novel, contemplating the memory of Miguel and Luisa, the husband and wife she grew to think of as the Perfect Couple, if only on the thin basis of observing them have breakfast each morning in the same cafe: