Berta Isla, by Javier Marías

Recent controversies aside, the truth is that Javier Marías He is one of those different authors, capable of bringing chicha out of any story, endowing everyday scenes with overwhelming weight and depth, while the plot advances with dancer's feet.
Perhaps that is why the mind of a creator like him slides towards the politically incorrect without any hint of rectification and bordering on disrespect (at least that is how those who do adhere to the politically correct see it). But as Michael Ende would say, "that is another story and must be told another time." It is already known that opinions are like asses, everyone has one.

Regarding the substance of this entry, the book Berta Island presents us with the construction of a life in common, of a family project raised from youth to maturity (that critical stage where doubts about what has been done so far can arise).

Berta Isla has been sleeping with Tomás Nevinsón for many years. They share their day-to-day life, so particular due to their high performances as well as general in their in-door routines. The common life of these two characters offers those foolish glows of the great days and the shadows of the worst moments, abounds in the idea of ​​the lightness of being as opposed to ideas such as permanence, union, stability and routine. Although perceptions of the marital situation aside, what moves this story mainly is the role that Tomás Nevinsón must assume from the outside of his house. Tomás is forced into situations of difficult fit with his personal life, turning his marriage at times into a cluster of absences and even prolonged disappearances.

Meanwhile, the routine that Tomás and Berta can more or less share, however, goes a long way. Triggers always arise that seem to seek the implosion of every relationship. Transcendental moments and discoveries or capricious awakenings of longings and desires for solitude. Berta and Tomás, characters with brushstrokes like the tightrope walkers that we all are, feeling safe in our daily lives but scared at the passing of time that comes upon us when we do introspection, and that invites us to advance on its tightrope with a paradoxical and tempting fear .

Berta Isla, a female character that reminds me of Cándida (An imperfect family, by Pepa Roma), assumes a role in which we can all see ourselves reflected. From his earliest youth until today he is represented from time to time a wasteland of time, in which he has barely been able to do anything, in which almost nothing has happened, being that the years have passed and old age appears in everything what surrounds it.

An unpleasant aroma of lost opportunities, personal journeys never undertaken, inhabits every soul that looks out the window of routine.

You can now reserve the book Berta Isla, the new novel by Javier Marías, here: