{"id":296846,"date":"2014-03-12T23:16:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T23:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/03\/12\/the-infatuations-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:27","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:27","slug":"the-infatuations-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/03\/12\/the-infatuations-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"The Infatuations &#8211; Why This Book Should Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>This post is courtesy of Best Translated Book Award judge, the inimitable George Carroll.  Not only is he one hell of a West Coast sales rep for publishing companies large and small, he has an inexhaustible knowledge of translated literature.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><txp_image id=\"6062\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.randomhouse.com\/book\/219846\/the-infatuations-by-javier-marias\">The Infatuations<\/i><\/a> by Javier Marias rolled into its publication date with more baggage than the Coast Starlight, more anticipation than the Wells Fargo wagon in <i>The Music Man<\/i>. <\/p>\n<p>Immediately, the griping and whining started. \u201cIt isn\u2019t his best book.\u201d \u201cIt isn\u2019t as good as (fill in the blank with any of his previous books).\u201d \u201cI really loved the trilogy, but this\u2026\u201d \u201cKnopf paid serious money for the book, did they know what they were getting?\u201d I even heard someone suggest the book was slighted because of readership loyalty to New Directions, Marias\u2019 previous publisher. <\/p>\n<p>However, <i>The New York Times<\/i>,<i> The Guardian<\/i>, <i>The Los Angeles Times<\/i>, <span class=\"caps\">NPR<\/span>, and <i>Slate<\/i> all made it through their reviews without an audible groan &#8211; and for good reason. This is a really good book.<\/p>\n<p>Marias is writing in genre, and he appears to be having a hell of a good time doing it. It\u2019s cerebral in ways similar to Frederick Knott\u2019s <i>Dial M for Murder<\/i>. It\u2019s less about the crime, less action, and more about the paths and perception &#8211; more philosophic than forensic.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve read a boatload of mysteries, but I can\u2019t remember one that does exactly what <i>The Infatuations<\/i> does. Not going to outline the plot, but the ending, no spoiler alert here, is dropped in your lap. <\/p>\n<p>I love Marias. I don\u2019t care if what he writes is High Fecking Art or not. And you shouldn&#8217;t either. <\/p>\n<p>This book should win <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/index.php?s=btb\">The Best Translated Book Award<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is courtesy of Best Translated Book Award judge, the inimitable George Carroll. Not only is he one hell of a West Coast sales rep for publishing companies large and small, he has an inexhaustible knowledge of translated literature. The Infatuations by Javier Marias rolled into its publication date with more baggage than the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[1646],"class_list":["post-296846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317646,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296846\/revisions\/317646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}