All Souls
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15
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Average rating3
All Souls is a compelling black comedy of Oxford life by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. This Penguin Modern Classics edition features a new Introduction by John Banville, author of The Sea. The pretty young tutor Clare Bayes attracts many eyes at an Oxford college dinner, not least those of a visiting Spanish lecturer (desperate to escape his conversation with an obese economist about an eighteenth-century cider tax). As they begin an affair, meeting in hotel bedrooms away from the eyes of Clare's husband, the Spaniard finds himself increasingly drawn into the strange world of Oxford, 'one of the cities in the world where the least work gets done', in a story of lust, loneliness, vanity and memory. Filled with brilliant set pieces and pin-sharp observation, All Souls is a masterpiece of black humour.
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It is hard to define this book with common literary views.
I don't think I love it, but I don't hate it too.
With the title of All Souls it explores an affair, but in the affair and all the affairs around Oxford, there are all of the souls. Mostly it is heavily lined with a melancholic air, stirring the affair towards the end as both Clare and the narrator knew the ending from the very beginning.
It was perhaps an interesting way to think of the affair as like, whether leaving Oxford and the impossibility to create a shared future with each other or being actually ignorant of what was exactly on the other side was in fact, the more regrettable option. The black sea, the river in blue and black, the deep blue eyes shared commonly in three people...All of these points to the commonly shared fates, I think, that by knowing the tragedy and commits half of it would be the best way to end a story.
Although some of the phrases in Oxford, mainly projected by the other less important characters act as additional information or plots diverged to support the theme framework, to me, some of the parts seemed too elongated and a bit flat-toned. Yet, there are still funny moments in the school life in Oxford as a Spaniard.
I think I'll give it another go if possible.
