The Infatuations by Javier Marias: The Best Book Dostoevsky Didn't Write

I'm just going to go ahead and put it out there. Javier Marias is the greatest novelist of our time. If that wasn't enough I'm going to go one step further. He is the only true heir to the great writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His books to date have carried echoes of the classics but this one puts one of my favourites front and centre. So here you go. The Infatuations is our generation's Crime And Punishment (with strong undertones of Macbeth). Its depth, complexity and intense profundity has not seen an equal in one hundred and fifty years.

The story is, at first, engagingly simple. Maria Dolz goes to a cafe each morning and becomes, well, infatuated with a seemingly perfect couple who are also regulars. She is, therefore, shocked when she learns that the man has been brutally stabbed to death in the street in what seems to be the random act of a madman. After a while she befriends the man's widow, and soon thereafter, her late husband's best friend. A strange love triangle forms, with ever shifting, increasingly more disturbing contours. It slowly dawns on Maria that, far from a random act of violence, this was a well-planned, well-executed murder and, in a round about way, she has become part of the plot.

Although it starts off with an act of terrible brutality, the majority of the novel is spent pondering important philosophical questions relating to the moment of death, the legacy of mourning, the nature and elasticity of love, and the shifting fidelities of friendship. It is also a meditation on the purpose of literature from someone who understands it better than most. With deftness that borders on perfection, Marias forces his reader to continue answering the same questions over and over again, each time with one minor difference in the premise. This is manipulation of the highest order; just when you think you have a handle on what's really going on, he throws a jaw-dropping curveball.

The Infatuations is an endlessly rewarding novel. I could drone on for hours about its superb intricacies but I don't want to spoil it. I also don't want to take any more of the time you should be spending with your face buried in this true modern masterpiece. Seriously, stop wasting your life. Step away from your computer now and get this book.

5 Out Of 5 Damn Spots