Academy Street
'She has a gift for relating even life's most calamitous events in matter-of-fact prose, and in doing so laying bare their true devastation.' Mary Costello's Academy Street reviewed in the Financial Times.
We argue with stories, internally or out loud. We talk back. We praise. We denounce. Every story is the beginning of a conversation, with ourselves as well as with others.
'In fact, for myself and my three brothers, the house was one long obstacle course, almost two hundred yards long, the obstacles always taking the form of books. That is why, from an early age, I became used to negotiating the words of the great philosophers and writers, with the inevitable result that I have a deep-rooted lack of respect for anyone who writes, myself included.' Javier Marías on the perils of growing up surrounded by books.
