Berta Isla
A novel
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4.3 • 7 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF SPAIN'S NATIONAL CRITICS AWARD • From the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of The Infatuations comes a gripping novel of intrigue and missed chances—at once a spy story and a profound examination of a marriage founded on concealment. • "A masterly premise ... worthy of a Hitchcock adaptation." —The New York Times Book Review
When Berta Isla was a schoolgirl, she decided she would marry Tomás Nevinson—the dashing half-Spanish, half-English boy in her class with an extraordinary gift for languages. But when Tomás returns to Madrid from his studies at Oxford, he is a changed man. Unbeknownst to her, he has been approached by an agent from the British intelligence services, and he has unwittingly set in motion events that will derail forever the life they had planned.
With peerless insight into the most shadowed corners of the human soul, Marías plunges the reader into the growing chasm between Berta and Tomás and the decisions that irreversibly change the course of the couple's fate. Berta Isla is a novel of love and truth, fear and secrecy, buried identities, and the destinies we bring upon ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mar as (Thus Bad Begins) transforms a spy thriller into an eloquent depiction of those left behind at home in this rich novel. Popular, beautiful Berta Isla decides she will marry Tom s Nevinson, a half-Spanish, half-British classmate with a preternatural ability to learn languages, while they are students together in mid-1960s Madrid. During his studies at Oxford, Tom s is recruited by a professor to use his abilities with languages and accents to serve as an infiltrator for the British Secret Intelligence Service. He demurs, until he is accused of murdering his British lover and needs help evading the charge. Mar as toggles to Berta as a narrator for Tom s's return to Spain, their marriage in 1974, and his cover job for the British Embassy. Berta struggles to cope with her husband's long, mysterious absences and forces a confession about his real job after a terrifying threat on their young son's life. Tom s offers scant details of his work, which only partially satisfies Berta, who spars with him. When he leaves on assignment just before the start of the Falklands War in 1982, Berta's worries compound as his time away stretches into months and then years. Mar as switches back to a third-person narrator for the gut-punching conclusion that explains what happened to Tom s. The espionage premise is initially enticing, but the real draw is the depth of Mar as's characterization. This weighty novel rewards readers with the patience for its deliberate dissection of a marriage.
