Javier Marías was one of the best Spanish writers of the 20th century. His illness was long, and for those of us who refused to think that this possibility was part of nature, it was cruel, terrible, as unexpected as it was unfair.
Many of his friends, as I know, there was no need to imagine it, we felt that this was the prologue to worse news. In that book I got engrossed as if people were resurrected because you invoked them. There was another book, in which he was, and is, that I had read when it came out, and that burned in my memory, but to which I did not want to return. It was like hearing him laugh, feeling him close and speaking. He was always in the pile of his complete works, like a toy that was saying goodbye to the one who closes the door, and sees you soon The author of Corazón tan blanco had, for that purpose, a long conversation with Elide Pittarello.