The Infatuations, Javier Marías

This book was gorgeous. The writing, the themes that kept repeating: just beautiful. I'm not positive, but I think the thing I liked most in this book was a description of the aftermath of a death, all the little things that are left in a state of non-completion when death interrupts someone's life. Marías -- or the narrator -- refers to "the novel with the page turned down, which will remain unread, but also the medicines that have suddenly become utterly superfluous and that will soon have to be thrown away..." and many more things. The character in the novel has lost her husband, but I read that passage and immediately thought of the bottle of pills I got for my old cat's stomach illness two days before she died -- nearly a year ago. The almost full bottle is still sitting on top of my fridge. My cat aside, this book dealt in lovely detail with the space we take up in the world and what happens to the the people and objects we affect when death removes us.