Review: Your Face Tomorrow, by Javier Marías

REVIEWED BY STEPHEN SMITH

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

PUBLISHED MARCH 29, 2010

Javier Marías, who is Spanish, may be the best novelist you've never heard of. People say this, though they never get around to explaining why you've never heard of him, and whether the fault is yours or his or somebody else's. Other people, who have heard of him, say that Marías needs a Nobel Prize; Orhan Pamuk is one of those. Margaret Drabble has confessed to reading one of Marías's novels and then, when she wanted to forget it, well, guess what, she couldn't. Which is strange praise, I have to say, and even a little bit spooky.

Quincy Jones
Photograph by Canadian Press
Poster by T.A.

Quincy Jones: the day Michael Jackson's pet snake got loose in the studio

He played Vegas with Sinatra, produced Miles Davis and borrowed Bowie’s yacht to go on holiday. Quincy Jones talks about growing up in gangland Chicago, Joe Pesci’s jazz album – and why he’ll leave the US if his former friend Trump wins

Stephen Smith
Tuesday 23 August 2016 18.17 BST

Y

ou might imagine that the best connected man in London would be a faceless civil servant who has the mobile number of every world leader and his or her pharmacologist. In fact, the title might belong to a stooped and slightly deaf 83-year-old, who is humming trumpet parts in a rehearsal room in the shadow of the Shard.

Quincy Jones has steadily accumulated kudos and leverage everywhere from the cat houses of the old R&B circuit to the Oval Office. And now he’s dropping names with the practised dispatch of a short order chef cracking eggs into a skillet. Sure, he knows Donald Trump from way back. The two men were once friends, though Jones growls: “I’ll leave the country if that sucker wins.” (Of course, he may be a little parti pris, as he was the musical director of Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony.) David Bowie? A huge loss as well as a dear friend, from whom Jones somewhat improbably rented a yacht for his vacations.