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Thus Bad Begins

Audiobook
Fiction: Literary
Unabridged   16.75 hour(s)
Publication date: 11/01/2016

Thus Bad Begins

A Novel

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781681682808
Digital Download ISBN:9781681682815

Summary

From the internationally acclaimed author of The Infatuations comes the mesmerizing story of a couple living in the shadow of a mysterious, unhappy history—a novel about the cruel, tender punishments we exact on those we love.

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Product Description

Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost; and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate. As Juan draws closer to the truth, he uncovers only more questions. What is at the root of Muriel's hostility toward his wife? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? What happened during the war? Marías leads us deep into the intrigues of these characters, through a daring exploration of rancor, suspicion, loyalty, trust, and the infinitely permeable boundaries between the deceptions perpetrated on us by others and those we inflict upon ourselves.

Reviews/Praise

"Voice actor Fass rises to the challenge of reciting Marías’s latest novel . . . In keeping with the novel’s tone, Fass reads in a vocal range that is dreary, yet often seductive, and sometimes tense or jocular." —Publishers Weekly Audio Review

"Powerful . . . Marías is a master of a kind of suspense that is rare in the modern novel." —New York Times

"A Spanish film director's marriage-gone-wrong is examined in detail in Javier Marías's delightfully thoughtful novel about telling the truth in love." —Shelf Awareness

Author Bio

Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. The recipient of numerous prizes, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Femina Étranger, he has written fourteen novels, three story collections, and twenty works of collected articles and essays.