*Named the #1 Best Book of the Year in Spain by El País* "As a literary mystery,
Thus Bad Begins calls to mind Paul Auster, Donna Tartt, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón; purely as literature, it feels like an heir to the searching human nuance of the novels of Gabriel García Márquez . . . Javier Marías is the real deal . . . Mesmerizing."
--USA Today "The book that defines Marías's oeuvre as one of Spain's most celebrated contemporary writers . . . Marías creates a symphony."
--Boston Globe "A demonstration of what fiction at its best can achieve."
--Hari Kunzru, The Guardian "A major work from a global talent,
Thus Bad Begins knits Hitchcockian suspense into a hypnotic tale crackling with erotic tension and political strife."
--Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Erudite, strange, hypnotic, and beautiful . . . One reads Javier Marías for his ability to make the smallest parts of the world come alive . . . I found myself most loving the book for its pages of brilliant observations, its musings and its suspenseful elegant voice . . . I could not put it down."
--Los Angeles Times "'Rear Window' in Madrid . . .
Thus Bad Begins delivers all of Marías's trademark qualities--chewy philosophical meditation, prose of fastidious elegance, and the suspense of an old-fashioned potboiler . . . It's now clear that Margaret Jull Costa and Javier Marías have forged one of the most fruitful author-translator partnerships in current literature."
--Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal "Fascinating . . . Hypnotic . . . As de Vere and Muriel try to get to the heart of matters, they discover secrets they wish they hadn't . . . but the reader will devour every exquisitely wretched revelation."
--TIME "I read the final pages in full thrall of Marías's novelistic power . . . I was reminded too that Marías is a master of a kind of suspense that is rare in the modern novel."
--Karan Mahajan, New York Times Book Review "Marías is the leading light of a generation of Spanish novelists . . .
Thus Bad Begins has lots to say about the political and social changes that have shaped Marías's outlook. It's also a kind of tragedy in comic form, or perhaps the other way round . . . Marías never seems seriously troubled by the long list of technical challenges he has to tackle to develop all this. With immense adroitness, he makes sure that Eduardo isn't simply a wronged husband or a vengeful sadist and keeps Beatriz from turning into a doormat, a hysteric, or a vamp, and thereby maintains the reader's sympathy for both."
--Christopher Tayler, Harper's "On the surface, the novel is part detective caper and part domestic drama. [But]
Thus Bad Begins isn't merely a novel about specific characters and their specific scandals; rather, they are stand-ins for the universal . . . If novels can be calls to action, then this one is a clarion for open dialogue."
--Village Voice "Javier Marías captures his nation's long-lasting trauma . . . In Madrid of 1980, the setting for
Thus Bad Begins, an entire country finds itself at a crossroads . . . Each of Marías's characters must decide how much is worth forgiving and how much might be worth forgetting."
--Washington Post "Javier Marías has entered that rarefied space in which a writer becomes essential to society. He is a critical conscience who can express what philosophers and political scientists can't....
Thus Bad Begins is a novel, of course, but it could be perfectly read, too, as a beautiful, savage essay on hypocrisy."
--Álvaro Enrigue, Publishers Weekly "Enticing and absolutely addictive . . . Marías is a writer of formidable skills and achievement."
--Washington Times "In highly respected Spanish novelist Marías's new work, we quickly see that political tensions have continued to reverberate [from the Spanish Civil War] . . . Marías reveals how insidiously oppression skews personal lives and relationships year after year."
--Booklist "Marías's marvelously idiosyncratic sentences achieve a dazzling textual equivalent of life's endless complexity. Another challenging, boundary-stretching work from Marías, complete with a jaw-dropping last-chapter revelation."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred) "Marías's latest resumes his trademark themes of the quest for truth and the haunting presence of Spain's civil war . . . It wallops audiences with some startling twists."
--Library Journal "A novel that teases, tantalises, entertains, and is easily as engrossing as anything he's written before . . . Marías manages to tread the tightrope between a very literary fiction and an absorbing plot; the book dangles the promise of dark, sexual secrets revealed, even as it draws you into a contemplation of the wrenching dilemmas that have shaped modern Spain."
--Siobhan Murphy, The Times "Marías is Spain's own modern-day Cervantes . . . His style is less showy than Umberto Eco's, and wittier and more playful than Elena Ferrante's."
--Robert Collins, The Sunday Times "A simply unputdownable psychological and erotic and political thriller."
--Amanda Craig, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review "One of Marías's most enjoyable and accessible novels."
--Luke Brown, Financial Times "A ferociously addictive, troubling, seductive read . . . I was gripped by every word."
--Emma Townshend, Independent on Sunday "Hypnotic . . . There's a slow-building sense of Hitchcock in
Vertigo mode that keeps us engaged."
--Lee Langley, The Spectator "Magnificent."
--John Harding, Daily Mail "Never less than seamlessly elegant . . . As brilliantly well conceived and emotionally profound as one has come to expect from this master."
--Rosemary Goring, The Herald (Scotland)