La voz del narrador en las novelas de Javier Marías

Abstract

A strict revision of Javier Marías's narrative must start from the analysis of the narrator's voice, the main narrative component in a novel. El hombre sentimental's publication in 1986 is going to indicate the beginning of a fruitful creative stage of this writer based on the first person narrative voice use. The protagonist narrator tells us a piece of his past that needs to be related in order to be understood. The result is a never linear narration that prospers thanks to the narrator's continuous digressive asides. Javier Marías went on with the same use of the narrator's voice in his following fictions Todas las almas (1989), Corazón tan blanco (1992) and Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí (1994). In his last work Negra espalda del tiempo (1998) a narrator called Javier Marias is the main character of a sort of novel placed between fiction and reality. Again a mysterious voice is the only protagonist of a spiral narration of which main purpose is its own narrative act.