- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (5 Aug 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099448483
- ISBN-13: 978-0099448488
- Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 1.5 x 19.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 284,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Independent
‘Crackles with deliciously sly observations about Oxford mores’
Independent on Sunday
‘An intelligent and well-executed book with exceptionally funny set pieces’
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I must agree with the other negative reviewer; this book is not bad per se, but it is just so completely outclassed by Marias' other books that I've read (A Heart So White and Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me), which are both so much more ambitious and original and exciting, that I just could not at any stage muster much enthusiasm for it. Javier Marias is hugely intelligent, and certainly one of the world's most key novelists at present, but not on the evidence of this book. It's clever, it's well-written, it's witty, but it doesn't have any of the moments of profundity that his other two I've read have, none of the gravitas. It is nothing more than a novel of academic life on an Oxford campus. Compared to A Heart So White, this is trivial stuff, and that other novel completely eclipses this. If you're new to Marias, read A Heart So White because it's a work of genius; only read this if you've loved his other works and are a completist.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A highly satisfying novel. Marias constructs a thoughtful but not over-complex narrative and adds plenty of very pleasing (and accurate) vignettes and impressions about life in Oxford. People who are familiar with the city will definitely get a lot out of this book. Even those who are not, however, will be fully able to appreciate the superb approaches to themes including love, sloth, loneliness, and growing old. Fans of W.G. Sebald would be likely to enjoy this book. Highly recommended.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Few Spanish writers have published books about Great Britain because spanish weren't living abroad time enough for understanding foreign countries except South America, and a little, Germany and France in the case of emigrant workers of industry, but this late have finished thirty years ago. Until perhaps 1970, ordinary Spanish and Portuguese writers were prone to dense, mostly rural dramas if not tragedies when religious factors were very important, and strong and sperpentic passions destroyed the personages if they not take catholic confession; summing up, these works were undigestible. For that, certain renaissance of literature in spanish had to be born in South America, but nevertheless, a great proportion of Spanish- American writers uses to taste a marked pulsion towards melancholy or a lujuriant phantasy that -in spite of his quality- is alien to Spanish, that can be bitter o brigth and live but usually not have these qualities. Well, times have changed a little; Javier Marias seems to like english culture and also, personages that would have been something great in life according to standards or current criterions, but that invariably have a hidden weakness that frustrate his social or money success. "All Souls" is a lively novel about the academic world and life in Oxford, I think is realistic, and deliberately no pretends to tell deep questions, though he describes British character very finely, withouth topics, as the love affair of the spanish teacher with a married Englishwoman that is clearly superficial and mostly seems a result of the loneliness of both; but that ligthness is rare in spanish literature. This novel isn't usual as the whole works of Javier Marias and merite to be read.
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