While the Women are Sleeping

Javier Marias

While the Women are Sleeping

Marías' characters are slippery, and they live on the edges of society: a tramp, a butler, a bodyguard, a ghost. They threaten the everyday, rational world, and, compelled by desperation, are driven to perverse acts of obsession. 3.5 out of 5 based on 6 reviews
While the Women are Sleeping

Omniscore:

Classification Fiction
Genre Short Stories
Format Paperback
Pages 144
RRP £8.99
Date of Publication November 2011
ISBN 978-0099553922
Publisher Vintage
 

Marías' characters are slippery, and they live on the edges of society: a tramp, a butler, a bodyguard, a ghost. They threaten the everyday, rational world, and, compelled by desperation, are driven to perverse acts of obsession.

Read the short story WHILE THE WOMEN ARE SLEEPING on the New Yorker website

Reviews

The Independent on Sunday

Leslie McDowell

"… haunting …"

06/11/2011

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The Spectator

Margaret Drabble

"... we soon enter his characteristically darker world of voyeurism, jealousy, revenge, doppelgängers and crime passionel. But the tone throughout the volume is playful rather than tragic, which is a relief to the reader after the extraordinary levels of violence and sadism of his last full-length work, Your Face Tomorrow ..."

18/12/2010

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The Daily Mail

Michael Arditti

"Elsewhere, murderous lovers, deathly love games and mysterious tramps feature strongly in an offbeat collection, whose only defect is a lack of emotional charge."

18/11/2010

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The Evening Standard

William Leith

"Javier Marias writes stories that are playful and macabre - he's a sort of mid-point between Borges and Roald Dahl."

10/11/2011

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The Independent

Richard Gwyn

"These stories provide a fascinating insight into the development of a great writer; particularly his experimentation with voice and subject matter. But they are not comparable with the achievement of the novels."

03/12/2010

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The Observer

Julius Purcell

"Marías is a novelist at heart. Like powerful, majestic serpents, his long sentences, with their mix of elevated and informal language, need time and space in which to flail and writhe to their full effect. While his later, mature novels are unquestionably haunting (to use the English word he is so fascinated by), the ghosts of this collection seem rather more like empty shadows. Shadows, you might say, of his future self."

12/12/2010

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