Just back from a month in Spain, house- and cat-sitting for our son and his family while they visited his in-laws in S. America. It was good to have a change of scene, culture and climate. This is what I’ve been reading en route and while there:

Javier Marías, Tomás Nevinson. Translated from the Spanish (as usual) by Margaret Jull Costa. Penguin, 2024; 2021¹. I’ve read a good deal of this author’s work (links to posts about them can be found by searching his name in the search box), and this was sadly his last novel: he died in 2022. This was not his finest; at over 600pp it sprawled a little too much – but Marías even when sprawling is always entertaining and bracing. Most of the characters have appeared in his earlier spy thrillers – the eponymous Tomás, who’d been recruited to MI5 as a student at Oxford, then trained by the urbane Bernard Tupra. His semi-estranged wife, Bella, featured centrally in Bella Isla.

Tomás is tempted by Tupra out of retirement and an edgy reconciliation with Bella – one last assignment. He’s given details of three women living in a northwestern Spanish town, one of whom is a member of the IRA who’d been involved in bomb attacks while liaising with the Basque separatist terrorist group ETA in the eighties. His mission is to get to know all three and…well, deal with her (‘take her out of the picture’ is how the sinister Tupra puts it). Much of the subtlety and complication of the narrative involves Tomás grappling with his finer feelings and sense of betrayal and duplicity as he gets to know the three women more intimately, in conflict with the imperative to stop this person a) getting away with mass murder, and b) committing another such act. Besides, what if he takes out the wrong woman?

There are the usual layers of literary allusion and quotation, especially Shakespearean (and in particular that sanguinary play, Macbeth); a recurring phrase, that haunts and taunts Tomás, is ‘Nought’s had, all’s spent’. The significance of this enigmatic statement shifts and reforms itself as Tomás’s compromised position develops.

I shall miss these flawed characters and the nuanced narrative poise of this fine author.

Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and her German Garden. VMC 1985; 1898¹. The author moved with her husband, the German aristocrat Count von Arnim, to his rural estate, 90 miles north of Berlin. At its heart was a 17C castle, later a convent, but it and the estate had been uninhabited and neglected for over 25 years. The building was semi-derelict, and the grounds overgrown and weed-filled.

The Elizabeth who narrates this slightly fictionalised account of that period of her life loves the solitude the estate provides, and the haven it provides for her to read and tend the garden. There are rather too many detailed accounts of what plants she cultivates and how she arranges the borders; there’s a semblance of plot and narrative variation in the sequence of demanding female guests she entertains – much to the consternation and disapproval of her husband, whom she unflatteringly refers to always as ‘the man of wrath’. He expounds some pretty horrible misogynistic views about the status and shortcomings of women: they are just below ‘children and idiots’ in his estimation.

It’s a strange, meandering novel/memoir, and a touch too whimsical for my taste.

Kate Grenville, Restless Dolly Maunder. Canongate, 2024. This was one of the novels Mrs TD brought with her to Spain. I’d read and enjoyed this Australian author’s earlier novel The Secret River; this one also arises from the history of her ancestors after emigration (or transportation) to Australia.

Its theme is presented in a more sustained and overt way than von Arnim is prepared to commit to: the terrible restrictions and humiliations imposed on women in patriarchal late-19C – early 20C society. Dolly is a clever, spirited girl, but her ability to make something of her life is severely curtailed by societal and familial expectations. That’s why she’s so restless, always questing for a new venture, a new challenge.

Unfortunately I found this led to a repetitive narrative structure: she moves from one business to another (hotels or hospitality – considered acceptable for a woman) with her feckless husband. It’s nevertheless an interesting account of Dolly’s struggle for some kind of autonomy in a world where women are considered second-class (as Elizabeth found with her ‘man of wrath’). The last few pages provide much-needed background and context – I might have responded more positively to the novel if this had come earlier.

Catalonia was as lovely as ever, and we had a memorable trip to the dramatic mountaintop basilica and monastery of Montserrat to see ‘la Moreneta’ – the black Madonna.