Thus Bad Begins

Voice actor Fass raises to the challenge of reciting Marías’s latest novel, which is told from the perspective of Juan De Vere, a 23-year-old assistant to the Spanish film director Eduardo Muriel. The story is set in Spain in 1980, five years after the death of Franco—a period of the transition for Spain and its citizens. The damage of his dictatorship is very much present throughout, as De Vere becomes aware of the lasting effects of Franco’s regime and grapples with who did what to whom in the fascist era and who is to be forgiven and who punished, how and by whom. The title of the book is taken from Act III of Hamlet: “Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.” In keeping with the novel’s tone, Fass reads in a vocal range that is dreary, yet often seductive, and sometimes tense or jocular. The challenge to both reader and listener is intensified by Marías’s style of prose, which mirrors life’s complexity by beginning each sentence with a thought, then digressing from or contradicting or narrowing or expanding it. Conjunctions link long, breathless trains of thought together throughout. A Knopf hardcover. (Nov.)