A book about Elvis inciting a fight in Mexico as a premise sounds pretty damn incredible, am I right? What's not to love about that? Basically, that alone was more than enough to sell me, and I already anticipate that I'll need to revisit this one, as life circumstances at the time meant I had to break it up into small chunks instead of breezing through it all at once, like I had wanted to.

Essentially, Elvis is filming a movie in Mexico and wants his accent to be legit - South American Spanish as opposed to Spain Spanish - so he hires Ruibérriz de Torres (who apparently appears in other Marías books) to help him with his pronunciation, but de Torres basically ends up serving as a translator for most of the trip. A fight breaks out during one of the cast and crew's nights out at a bar and things escalate from there.

More than anything, Bad Nature ultimately ends up being about the power of words and language, the intricacies and unintended consequences. To get into it more than that is to over-express the whole thing, and honestly it's so short as to be worth reading..

Part of the reason why I wish I'd read it in one clip is because the first few pages take a bit to get into - Marías writes with a particular rhythm that takes time to adapt to, but ends up being the perfect treatment for the story and the subject.

I'd love to do a deeper dive on this, but it's been awhile now since I've read it, and ultimately, I think it's probably worth your time if you remotely have any interest - it's 57 pages, just go for it.

This is my first and only Marías thus far, and while I don't feel as though I can make any greater conclusions about his work, it was enough that I would consider something else of his, though I've heard decidedly mixed things about The Infatuations. If you've read something of his you've liked, I'd like to hear about it.