Review of <i>While the Women Are Sleeping</i>

The final and perhaps greatest pleasure in the book, however, is found in rereading and discovering that the work is not quite what you thought it was—it’s not the stories only, it’s the soft surprises that burst from Marias’s delicate prose (via Margaret Jull Costa’s rendering in the way that I like best in a translation: she gives the feeling that what you’re reading is decidedly not English, though you can’t point to exactly why it feels that way, as her English at the same time feels perfectly natural—Chris Andrews’s translation of Cesar Aira’s Ghosts is another example of English prose that dexterously retains some flavor of the original Spanish).

A review of New Directions’ While the Women Are Sleeping, a collection of Javier Marías stories put out about a year ago (translated by the superhuman Margaret Jull Costa). [via Three Percent]

I have not got my hands on it, but I am on the last book of Your Face Tomorrow (starting on “Shadow” soon if school doesn’t interfere), and I was about to place an order on it when I realised that there’s a new Anne Carson book coming. Decisions, decisions.

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