Skip to main content

The Infatuations

Book Review

Author:            Javier Marias
Translated from Spanish by: Margaret Jull Costa
Publisher:        Hamish Hamilton, 2013
Pages:  346

This is a novel that revolves round a murder mystery, but there is not a single police officer or detective in it.  There is no investigation of the murder because the murderer is an insane person with a motive.  The narrator of the novel, Maria, knows more.  There is a cunning person behind the murderer, and Maria learns soon that “the most powerful and most cunning of people never dirty their own hands or their own tongue.”  They know how to do the dirty deeds by using other people as instruments. 

The novel is about such people.  The novel is about the prevalence of evil in human life.  Right from the beginning of the human civilisation we find the same kind of crimes repeated endlessly, ad nauseam.  “The worst thing is that so many disparate individuals in every age and every country – each on his own account and at his own risk, should all choose the same methods of robbery, deception, murder or betrayal against the friends, colleagues, brothers, sisters, parents, children, husbands, wives, or lovers of whom they now wish to dispose, and who were doubtless the very people whom they once loved most, for whom, at another time, they would have given their life or killed anyone who threatened them...”  The same character, the protagonist of the novel, goes on to say, “We see the same wicked feelings repeated over and over, and nothing can correct them...”

The Infatuations is a metaphysical novel about evil.  There is very little by way of plot.  In fact the first one-third of the novel does not read like a novel; there’s no story really.  Even when the plot begins, there’s very little progress.  Yet the novel is a masterpiece.  And that precisely is the author’s success.  He keeps you enchanted.  His words dig into your imagination like penetrating needles.  He shocks you out of complacence.  He forces you to think, think differently from what you’ve been doing so far. 

The title of the novel refers to the relationship that most human beings establish with life and other people.  “We live quite happily with a thousand unresolved mysteries that occupy our minds for ten minutes in the morning and are then forgotten...  We don’t want to go too deeply into anything or linger too long over any event or story, we need to have our attention shifted from one thing to another, to be given a constantly renewed supply of other people’s misfortunes...”  Infatuation is a superficial relationship.  

The novel touches upon such specific evils as envy and hate.  There are at least two places in the novel where envy is shown as a poison that is often “engendered in the breasts of those who are and who we believe to be our closest friends, in whom we trust; they are far more dangerous than our declared enemies.”

Evil is coeval with mankind.  There’s no escape from it.  Very few criminals get caught.  Human societies have learnt to accommodate evils of various types.  Truth is never clear in such a world; “it’s always a tangled mess.”

Caught in that tangled mess, the wise person would assume that prudence is the ideal virtue. 

The novelist, Marias, brings in a lot of literary allusions many of which are explained in necessary detail to show the prevalence of evil throughout human history.  Occasionally ‘novel’ itself becomes a dominant theme in the book.  “... once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten.  What matter are the possibilities and ideas that the novel’s imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with...”


The Infatuations does open in our mind’s eye a vast world of possibilities and ideas.  That’s the greatest achievement of the book. It disturbs us; that's an added achievement of the book. 

Comments

  1. Intrigued by your review. Will have to pick it up and read it to see how I like it now. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The book has drawn international attention, Raghav. I'm sure it will grip your imagination too. All the best.

      Delete
  2. I agree with Raghav, intrigued to read it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "There are at least two places in the novel where envy is shown as a poison that is often “engendered in the breasts of those who are and who we believe to be our closest friends, in whom we trust; they are far more dangerous than our declared enemies.” "

    I have personally experienced it. True. I agree with the author.

    Fabulous review.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The book presents a very bleak view of humanity. Envy is just a part of that world. There's much more in store for the reader: jolting realisations.

      Delete
  4. Your review has got me curious! Will try and pick the book this weekend. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The book is drawing much attention in many countries. Wish you all the best with it.

      Delete
  5. Nice Review, A G+ for ur post and Have a Nice Day. . . :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Seems like a very interesting book !

    ReplyDelete
  7. These days I am more worried about the evil that I recognizes inside me...when I interact with people around me...I cry over the loss of my innocence that I had within me until a few years ago :( Scared about the years to come...Scared how people transform over the years

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is it possible for any individual to retain his or her goodness when the world around is becoming increasingly malicious? How much can one protect oneself from one's environment? I have seen innocent children getting corrupted in hostels in a matter of months: tragically corrupted. I have seen angels becoming devils in schools. Adults are not free from such tragedy either.

      Delete
  8. http://skmanimekalai.blogspot.in/2013/09/amba.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. Replies
    1. The books is quite unique. You will like it if you are fond of cerebral novels.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Quasi-Humans

Book Review Title: Soft Animal Author: Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2023 Pages: 261   Very many people – too many, in fact – live partial lives. That is, most people don’t explore the depths of anything: the meaning of their life, of their love, of their religion, whatever. There is no passion about anything. Consequently, life becomes dull, even painful. This novel is about the dull pain experienced by a woman in her mid-thirties. She is married to a rich man who was in a love-relationship with her for long enough before marriage. He is an IT professional and she is a homemaker. Mukund Chugh and Mallika Rao. A rich Punjabi boy and the not-so-rich “south Indian girl” (as her in-laws refer to her). Mukund is a good guy. Mallika, the first-person narrator tells us that “All my life I had wanted to be with someone like Mukund, someone so sure of themselves and their identity.” But disillusionment follows soon enough. Entering into married