All Souls

Rating:
Summary: Exposing the phoneys
Review: A devastating picture of the Oxbridge university system, with its fossilized ways, its unreal academics disconnected from the real world, the dowdy town and frowsty gown, crumbling spires and unbreakable atmosphere of privilege that the university exudes. Javier Marias knows what he is talking about for he taught there. But being Spanish, he is not in mental thrall to the very idea of Oxford (or Cambridge) the way most Anglo-Saxons are.

Unfortunately, it is more of a series of vignettes than a highly developed novel but Marias approach enables him to pour barrelfuls of acid on the place. Its highpoint is the account of a supper at an Oxford college high table, that starts off well but rapidly breaks down into intellectual, moral and physical chaos. Some of the writer's aphorisms (such as the reference to Oxford being preserved in aspic, and statements like the one arguing that the city is "one of the world's cities where least work gets done, where simply being is far more important than doing") should be engraved in marble and set up in the middle of the High.

The novel won a prize back home in Spain and M/s Costa's translation is brill.

Rating:
Summary: Great writing by great author
Review: A mixture of humor and sadness guided by the plume of one of the best contemporary authors. Marias' novel is built with intelligence and amenity.

Rating:
Summary: Elegiac and sweet
Review: A novel which appears to be about nothing but suggests everything. It is set in one of the two most famous English Universities, and very little of moment occurs in its pages - there is no murder, no scandals, no international spies but en passant the novel alludes to all of these things. It concerns itself with the minutia of daily living as seen through the eyes of the single Spanish lecturer. The eccentricities, gentleness, and foibles of this section of English life are a central concern with the realisation that far from being an ivory tower where inhabitants concern themselves with matters of a higher order, of philosophy, of God, and existence, they spend their time as best friend Dr Cromer-Blake expostulates, thinking about men and women - everything one does, everything one thinks, everything else that one thinks and plots about is a medium through which to think about them. Even wars are fought in order to be able to start thinking again, to renew our unending thinking about our men and women, about those who were or could be ours, about those we know already and those we will never know, about those who were young and those who will be young , about those who shared our beds and those who never will (p64). In the end, there is a sadness when the novel closes, a sweet sorrow and an acknowledgement of connection between his pushing his newborn son along in a pram and Marriott dragging his one legged dog along, or the Gypsy flowerseller dragging her wares along. It is a love story, but expresses itself in a love of humanity which happens to be that situated in Oxford, England. A love story that echoes Donne's lines that no man is island entire unto himself even though he may often feel he is!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent translation does not make a good novel
Review: My Heart so White was an excellent book that kept up the suspension, though there were some unnecessarily lengthy philosophical passages in it. All Souls starts off with a lot of promise, it has some witty observations about life and the meaning of life in Oxford, about English academics and their obsessions, about a foreigner trying to find his feet in that rather idiosyncratic world, and about his becoming a hunter rare books ... and one or two quite original portraits of the people that inhabit that world. But these little scattered gems of excellent writing, admirably translated by Margaret Jull Costa, cannot hide the fact that there simply isn't a story worth telling here. I found the hero utterly self-absorbed and not worthy of sympathy, or interest. It remains a mystery what he finds so attractive in his lover Clare, since she is very much a cardboard character. The same can be said of his academic protector, who is a jealous homosexual ... it's all too stereotyped to be believable, or worthy of our attention.
All in all a book that has some beautifully written passages but left me completely indifferent.

Rating:
Summary: Sad,Sadly.
Review: One of the books my father would stop reading and put on the top shelf because it's so sad. Vacuum. No "fear god in life" but fear of cold and emtpiness. The enormous amount of awe Oxford demands.sun on the walls, but also constant vivisection practised behind them. It all seems to be a riddle like the ones Borges indulged in (but can't be explained in 10 minutes)...so worth being read..

Sin la templenza vista tu alguna cosa perfeta? Oh death come quiet as in the arrow You are wont to come.....

Rating:
Summary: Only read this book if you love literature
Review: Only read this book if you love literature.
Marias is the type of gifted writer who makes telling compelling stories 'look easy,' and thus inspires us to wish that we had written down our own adventures, perceptions, and loves. Although it is fiction, it caused quite an uproar at Oxford/Cambridge, because the professors there read themselves into the book's characters.
All Souls, from the opening pages to the end, is an evocative, inventive, textured, and fabulous novel.
Five stars, all the way.