A Heart So White by Javier Marias

The opening line of A Heart So White is quite an attention grabber. Not wanting to give anything away, I’ll leave it unspoken.

It’s title refers to Shakespear’s MacBeth and the insinuation is that the eventual truth, once revealed, emphasizes the cowardice of the man behind the deed whose heart is white and bloodless.

Juan is the son of a successful art dealer who searches for the truth behind his aunt’s mysterious death and oscillates between wanting to and not wanting to know the truth. He is an interpreter working with diplomats who is newly wed and begins to question his father’s prior marriages as well as his own.

Father to Juan, Ranz is suave and very skilled at not addressing the elephant in the room. His demanding career is winding down giving him more time for introspection yet still uncomfortable with exposing his secret.

Luisa is Juan’s wife and also an interpreter who has a very strong bond with Ranz, perhaps due to her no nonsense demeanor. She urges Juan to seek the truth about his father and offers to act as intermediary when she recognizes his extreme discomfort with confronting his father.

A foreboding figure, Miriam is observed by Juan from a balcony in Cuba as she impatiently awaits her lover. When she realizes he is watching her, she mistakes him for another and unloads a diatribe upon him.

Quotes:

And I was impatient because I was aware that what I didn’t hear now I never would hear; there would be no instant replay, as there can be when you listen to a tape or watch a video and can press the rewind button, rather, any whisper not apprehended or understood there and then would be lost for ever.

in our morbid attempt to prevent time from ending, to cause what is over to return, we will be letting that other time slip past us as if it were not ours.

Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instincitvely close againts the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.

I would have preferred not to know, although once you know about something, it’s difficult to know whether you wanted to know about it or would have preferred to remain in ignorance.

Would love meeting Mr. Marias and perhaps share my early dream of being a UN interpreter. Of course, I’d need to brush up my language skills, both English and Spanish. A glass of wine in Madrid would set the tone for a fine conversation.

My rating for A Heart So White is an 8 out of 10.

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Next up, Barry Hines’ A Kestrel for a Knave…