Heart so white first published by Anagram in the years 1992, but it has been reissued ever since. And it has become a contemporary classic of the novel. It bears the unmistakable signature of Javier Marías, who has seen how his novel has accumulated successes around the world (37 translations and 44 countries), as well as unanimous recognition from critics and the public.
With a bleak start, the protagonist and narrator is preparing for the tragedy. Juan Ranz is on a honeymoon in Havana with his wife Luisa. He will sense a bad omen in everything that surrounds him, as well as in his own personal history. He is a storyteller who will become a witness to the disaster.
Heart so white: or how to become a witness to the disaster
Hunch
Heart so white It is a novel of silences and presumptions with themes such as marriage, murder or conspiracy.. The gloomy uncertainty of a story narrated by its main character, Juan Ranz, abounds in it. He doesn't know either, but does he want to know? should he? Perhaps ignorance and assumptions are somehow the only way to save your marriage and his life.
On her honeymoon in Cuba, she overhears a conversation in her hotel room. A woman will mistake him for an acquaintance and he begins to have a paranoia that disaster could unleash. Doubts arise about his recent marriage to Luisa and about his own past and family history.. His father already went through several marriages with disastrous outcomes until he could be born.
It is an intellectual novel, made in part for a minority of readers who are accustomed to quality contemporary literary novels. And despite this, Javier Marías had thousands and millions of followers around the world. Heart so white It is a select morsel, suitable for all audiences seeking literary delight and narrative intensity.. To what extent it can be considered an autobiography, only the author knows, although part of the critics bet on a kind of autofiction when Juan Ranz is identified with Marías.
An enveloping novel
Despite the intellectual nature of the novel, its prose is clear, enveloping, and highly enigmatic and suggestive. Introspection abounds in the narrative, easy to follow and very enriching. Captures readers despite the density created, sometimes even suffocating. And this is something he does from the beginning. The beginning of the novel has become one of the most praised and recognized in Spanish literature.. The bad omens start from the first paragraph:
I didn't want to know, but I did know that one of the girls, when she was no longer a child and had not long returned from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, opened her blouse, she took off her bra and searched for her heart with the point of her own father's gun […].
This beginning is enough to exemplify what type of writer Javier Marías was and how he expresses his prose in a suggestive and sad way, also visual, with great mastery of narrative action. From here you can glimpse the weight that marriage and family will take on the plot in the life of Juan Ranz, the troubled protagonist of the novel who is also recently married and is on his honeymoon in Cuba.
As for its title, purity is glimpsed and also the feeling of guilt that spreads through hearts, which become a little dirtier as life progresses, the years and fatality comes.
Conclusions
Heart so white is a cultured novel by a cultured author who leaves part of himself in his work. It is a brilliant book, a classic, that is narrated in a spectacular way. Most critics agree on this, including the international one, and especially that of Germany, since Marías had a well-known army of followers there.
It is characterized by a rhythm of great literary beauty, leisurely, ingenious and full of surprises. Is a Enveloping novel as well as intense, in which secrets seem to be the only possible salvation. A book with omens from the soul of an intellectual who could well have written an autobiography.
About the Author
Javier Marías was born in 1951 in Madrid. Not long ago we met the news of his death at age 70 due to bilateral pneumonia due to a complication from COVID-19. He dedicated himself body and soul to literature, since in addition to writing fiction and essays, he was a translator and editor.. She came from a family of intellectuals in philosophy, cinema, art, or economics. He was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, as well as a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and at Oxford. He too has been a member of the Royal Society of Literature since 2021.
He was recognized with Critics Award or National Narrative Award, to name just a few of the most important awards he has received in his professional career. In total he published sixteen novels; among the most notable are The sentimental man, All souls, Heart so white, Tomorrow in battle think of me, the trilogy Your face tomorrow, Crushes, Berta Island, or the last, Thomas Nevinson. He was also a writer of essays, stories and newspaper articles.