berta isla (marias, tr jull costa)

The eponymous heroine of Berta Isla is an archetype for the kind of heroine that shouldn’t work. Berta does nothing except wait. Her husband, Tomas, is an agent for the British secret services. Where he goes and what he does remains a mystery, both to Berta and the reader. He might be in Northern Ireland, he might be in Buenos Aires. We and she will never know. Marias’ novel riffs off the work of Le Carré and Fleming, but where their writing takes us inside the workings of the secret service, Marias leaves us, like his heroine, firmly on the outside. She is Penelope, and the author stitches together her patient story with a minimal colour palette. This is also a novel about the beginning and the end, with very little in the middle, the middle being dedicated to the art of patience.

All of which makes for a curious, deliberately frustrating novel, which seems to undercut the demand for narrative and action. The plot points are staked at the beginning and ending, the suspense comes from not knowing, the jeopardy is ever-present but kept at arm’s length. In this sense, the novel subtly adopts the position of the reader. Few readers will be engaged, as Tomas is, in the defence of the realm. This is the luxury of peace, of modern European life. The dramatic action of our lives is tepid. Movies and literature seek to spice up this bland existence with tales of unlikely heroism, which have little to do with the realities of the cold war fought by those like Tomas. We sit at home, patiently awaiting our little drama of mortality, as we watch Netflix and contemplate which colour car to choose in order to destroy the planet.

Perhaps there is a cold fury lurking somewhere in Berta Isla, but it is so deeply buried that it can only emerge in the occasional news reports Berta catches of a murder in Belfast or the sinking of a ship in the South Atlantic. These currents, the book declares, course back and forth beneath the fabric of our lives, enabling us to circumvent tragedy. The price we pay for this, which is also our reward, is a kind of atomised, civilised banality.

And we should remember, as we flirt with other realities, the value of this banality.

“Why is there bread in the baker’s shops and cakes in the cake shops, why do the street lamps turn on and turn off, why does the stock market go up and down and everyone receive his or her high or low salary at the end of the month? This seems perfectly normal to us and yet it’s really quite extraordinary, it’s amazing that each day begins and ends.”