Dark Back of Time

DARK BACK OF TIME is an extraordinary work of literature, unlike anything else I have read. But like many good things, it is not readily accessible. Reading it, like reading anything by Marias, requires careful attention, even work. Moreover, for maximum effect, one probably should read at least two other works by Marias before tackling DARK BACK OF TIME (see the last paragraph of this review). DARK BACK OF TIME is an extended essay on fiction and reality, and how they interpenetrate and influence one another in story-telling and, ultimately, in memory and in history. The springboard for the book is the minor cause celebre occasioned by the publication in England of Marias's earlier novel, ALL SOULS, the setting of which was Oxford University. In large part because Marias himself had taught for two academic years at Oxford, he was immediately identified with the nameless narrator of ALL SOULS. Furthermore, despite Marias's adamant denials, many readers, especially in England, insisted that ALL SOULS was a roman a clef, whose characters were based on real individuals with whom Marias had interacted during his two years at Oxford. In DARK BACK OF TIME, Marias recounts and expounds on this confusion, this confounding of fiction and reality. Along the way, other subjects are also explored, including identity, death, time, the frailty of memory, the evanescence of life, and how "[e]verything is so random and absurd" (which is closely related to the question of whether there is, or can be, any meaning associated with our lives, and deaths). Reportedly, Marias has described DARK BACK OF TIME as a "false novel." I don't quite know what he means by that. To me, it is essentially a work of non-fiction, at least insofar as literary essays, imaginative and contemplative in nature, are non-fiction. Some I guess would call it "meta-fiction." Within the pages of the book there are, however, a few flights of pure fancy. There also are extended digressions involving actual minor historical figures not associated with Oxford, people like Wilfrid Herbert Gore Ewart (a WWI veteran and writer, touted by Conan Doyle and T.E. Lawrence, who was mysteriously shot and killed in Mexico City around the moment 1922 became 1923) and Hugh Oloff de Wet (a mercenary soldier who survived imprisonment as a spy in Nazi Germany). Members of Marias's family also make their appearance, including Javier's older brother who died suddenly, at the age of three, before Javier even was born. This happenstance occasions one of Marias's reflections on the "dark back of time" -- the "what-ifs" and "might have beens" in this world of randomness and absurdity: "If the child had lived longer, I might not have been born or might might not have been the same person, the two things are identical. And so what, if I hadn't been born, and so what, if my brother faded away and said goodbye so soon, as if [time] rushed to rid itself of his incipient will and forced it to cross over to

I'm not into writing amateur reviews for books I care about, but I feel duty-bound to help this one's average star rating. Maria's novel deserves more than the two stars the reader below gave it. After all, it's a fantastic and complex book--difficult to slog through at times, but that's what makes it fun. And New Directions (the best and most adventurous publisher around) ought to be thanked for taking Marias to the States. It's a shame the bigger houses tend to poach its writers.