A Heart So White
Javier Marías
 With unnerving insistence A Heart So White chronicles the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he considers the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy - its possible convenience, its price, an even its civility - permeates the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows - and reckons the costs of ambivalence. ('My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white" - Macbeth.)