Javier Marias's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy — its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility — hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marias elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows — and on to the costs of ambivalence.

"A harrowing drama of family secrets and their deepening resonance throughout several involved lives....[A]n unusual style that blends Jamesian introspection and qualification with headlong drama and rapid nonstop sentences." Kirkus Reviews

"[A Heart So White]...has brought Marías the applause of many...and is considered his best work. It might well be: It is an anti-detective story about genealogy and sin." Nation

"Ably rendered in English by Margaret Jull Costa (a translator's translator, if there ever was one), A Heart So White is an entertaining and intelligent novel that illustrates one of the ways in which younger Spanish novelists have advanced beyond the drab, count-your-tapas realism of much contemporary Spanish fiction." Washington Post Book World