Oxford blues
Apr. 24th, 2022 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: All Souls, by Javier Marías
I can't remember whether this book was recommended to me by R, or whether I just saw it on a pile. The premise described in the blurb on the back cover, of an affair between a visiting lecturer and another academic, probably wouldn't have particularly caught my eye. The citation from the Times Literary Supplement as "a dazzling example of the Oxford novel" might have drawn more attention - for what, exactly, is the Oxford novel?
In any case, the blurb somewhat mis-sells this book for me. Whilst the illicit relationship is the thread that weaves the story together, it's rather more an interesting collection of Oxford tropes: the caricature of a High Table dinner and the games academics play with each other, the spies, the secondhand booksellers, the beggars (I recall finding these quite intimidating on arriving in Oxford, and at some point, their number dwindled overnight, possibly some ruthless update to the law or policy in the early 1990s). I have mixed feelings about the gay character: on the one hand, it's important to document the dark early years of HIV/AIDS, but on the other, there feels some ubiquity in the writing, as if every gay man of the time had the disease (in this respect it reminds me of The Flanders Panel), and it hardly provides a cheery role model. Whilst this is definitely an Oxford novel, I'm none the wiser about the definitive article - Gaudy Night, Brideshead Revisited or Inspector Morse could all be candidates as well.
I can't remember whether this book was recommended to me by R, or whether I just saw it on a pile. The premise described in the blurb on the back cover, of an affair between a visiting lecturer and another academic, probably wouldn't have particularly caught my eye. The citation from the Times Literary Supplement as "a dazzling example of the Oxford novel" might have drawn more attention - for what, exactly, is the Oxford novel?
In any case, the blurb somewhat mis-sells this book for me. Whilst the illicit relationship is the thread that weaves the story together, it's rather more an interesting collection of Oxford tropes: the caricature of a High Table dinner and the games academics play with each other, the spies, the secondhand booksellers, the beggars (I recall finding these quite intimidating on arriving in Oxford, and at some point, their number dwindled overnight, possibly some ruthless update to the law or policy in the early 1990s). I have mixed feelings about the gay character: on the one hand, it's important to document the dark early years of HIV/AIDS, but on the other, there feels some ubiquity in the writing, as if every gay man of the time had the disease (in this respect it reminds me of The Flanders Panel), and it hardly provides a cheery role model. Whilst this is definitely an Oxford novel, I'm none the wiser about the definitive article - Gaudy Night, Brideshead Revisited or Inspector Morse could all be candidates as well.