I bought The Infatuations by Javier Marías over a year ago when I went with my husband to Bath for the weekend. It was our 10th wedding anniversary, and as we met each other at a book club, then what better way to celebrate 10 years of married life than a weekend which featured bookshops. I bought this book at Mr B’s Emporium Bookshop and it was on a staff recommendations shelf. I read the blurb on the back of the book and it sounded like something I wanted to read. So here we are.

Every day María Dolz sees the same attractive couple breakfast at the café she frequents. But one day they do not appear and she feels bereft. Later, she learns that the man was murdered in the street. So when his widow Luisa returns to the café, Maria approaches her – only to find herself quickly entangled in the murky affairs of Luisa and her friends. The more she learns about the murder the more María comes to doubt what she has been told. Could this apparently random, pointless death actually have a more chilling interpretation?

The Infatuations is all about María’s interest in, almost infatuation with this perfect, beautiful, couple who obviously adore each other, and who come into her local café each morning for breakfast before they all go off on their separate ways to work. But, as the blurb quoted above suggests, one day after she has been away for a little while they do not return and María later learns that the man of this couple has been murdered in a random attack in the street.

María thinks about this couple a lot, and what life must be like for the widow, losing the husband she seemed to be so in love with – she thinks through everything a lot – and so when she sees Luisa (the widow) return to the café she stops by to offer her condolences and is invited to Luisa’s house one evening. The women strike up a brief friendship larger based on María letting Luisa talk to her about her new situation, and María is introduced to one of Luisa’s friends, Díaz-Varela, who becomes María’s lover.

As María learns more about her lover and his relationship with the dead man, things take a rather darker turn, and María learns more than she bargained for about these people who have relatively recently come into her life, and María has decisions to make about what she believes about the situation and what she will do about it.

This is not a plot driven book, however much the blurb on the back of the book, or the above summary might suggest that it could be. In terms of the plot of the book it is rather slow moving. What the book is about is María’s internal life, her thoughts and feelings about everything that is going on. She is very much an analyser of the people around her, the situations she finds herself in and the stories that people tell her, and of her feelings about them. When she has a conversation with other people she will often imagine, in great detail, what the person she is talking to is thinking about. She will imagine conversations, for example, between the husband and wife or the husband and his best friend, Díaz-Varela. It isa very philosophical book, where both an awful lot happens and not a lot happens all at the same time.

This is not a book for everyone. If you like a plot driven book, then this is not for you. I did like it a lot, but I must admit that it took me a while to finish. I should warn you, as well, that this is a book that talks a lot about death and grief. It was a book that I regularly picked up and then put down for a while before picking it back up again for a bit. I enjoyed that as the book was mostly about María’s internal life you didn’t have to remember everything that was going on with the plot to get a lot out of the book.

I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t say it was my favourite book this year. It was a bit slow moving for me, and there were a few too many imagined conversations for my personal liking. That said, I think it will stay with me for a while. It is a very different book to ones I mostly read, and I am very glad I read it. I got a lot out of it.

I would give The Infatuations by Javier Marías probably 3.5 out of 5 stars.