The first time you read a novel by Javier Marías, it is easy to succumb to the invitations of his imagination. Enmeshing the ordinary (a translator, a teacher at a university, a ghostwriter) with the absurd (the uncovering of a murderous past, the marriage to a spy, the sudden death of a first date in her bedroom with nobody around to see it), he deftly takes a plain perspective and throws enough wrenches at it that introspection on reality’s absurdity naturally follows. Once begun, Marías takes you on journeys of long ideas and even longer sentences, dancing on the lines separating life and death, truth and lies, the face we show to the world and the one we hold up to a mirror in private. Where we see firm lines, he sees vast seas of grey.

Berta Isla is in this same mold – a madrileña marries her half-Spanish, half-British boyfriend Tomás Nevinson without knowing that he has been coopted into the British Secret Service by a happenstance crime he didn’t commit, but which all viable evidence points his way. The story embarks in typical Marías fashion down a stream of double-vision. Berta, the wife who suffers the long absences of her husband and the even deeper silences that envelope him when he returns. Tomás, grappling with a career that constantly forces him to be someone other than himself for months and even years at a time. A wall is erected between the two from the start; their attempt to navigate it is all the canvas Marías needs to dive into his investigations.

And yet… this may be the first novel of his which left me somewhat dissatisfied. Not that the ideas aren’t worth exploring — far from it. But the time given to Berta and her struggles is both insufficient in length and in creative exploration. While not a completely static character, her growth is limited and so presents something of a wasted opportunity. A shame since the setup and concept is tantalizing.

Clearly, Marías himself felt bored of dealing with Berta. After spending roughly half of Berta Isla writing from Tomás’s perspective, Marías wrote an entire other novel (his last) called Tomás Nevinson. You wish Marías had the conviction to scrap the project outright and do it over or do better by his protagonist. He chose the middle route: boredom bordering indifference. The book suffers all the more for it.

So it goes.