The Tenant and The Motive

by Javier Cercas, Anne McLean (Translator)

"The Tenant" and "The Motive" are two darkly humorous novels from the award-winning author of "Soldiers of Salamis". "The Tenant" is the mischievous story of Mario Rota, a linguistics professor whose life starts to unravel after he twists his ankle while out jogging one day. A rival professor appears, takes over his classes and bewitches his girlfriend. Where will Rota's nightmare end - and where did it begin? "The Motive" is a satire about a writer, Alvaro, who becomes obsessed with finding the ideal inspiration for his novel. First he begins spying on his neighbours, then he starts leading them on, creating a reversal of the maxim that art follows life, with some dire consequences. Written with a supremely light touch, these witty novels are enjoyable masterpieces that linger long in the memory.

Genres: Fiction, Spain, Short Stories, Literature, European Literature

188 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

About the author

Javier Cercas Mena (Ibahernando, provincia de Caceres, 1962) es un escritor y traductor español.

Hijo de un veterinario rural, cuando contaba cuatro años, en 1966 su familia se trasladó a Tarragona, y allí estudió con los jesuitas. Es primo carnal del político Alejandro Cercas. A los quince años la lectura de Jorge Luis Borges le inclinó para siempre a la escritura. En 1985 se licenció en Filología Hispánica en la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona y más tarde se doctoró. Trabajó durante dos años en la Universidad de Illinois en Urbana; mientras estaba allí se publicó su primera novela, El móvil, y compuso su segunda novela; desde 1989 es profesor de literatura española en la Universidad de Girona. Está casado y tiene un hijo. Se transformó en un autor de masas con su tercera novela, Soldados de Salamina (2001), que fue descubierta por Mario Vargas Llosa en un famoso artículo y mereció los elogios de John Maxwell Coetzee y Susan Sontag. Es colaborador habitual de la edición catalana y del suplemento dominical del diario El País.

Su obra ha sido traducida a más de veinte lenguas. Por su parte él mismo ha traducido a autores catalanes contemporáneos y a H. G. Wells.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

These two novellas feature contrasting intellectual types and very different settings. In the first story, a visiting professor in the US fears he will be cut out of his teaching position by a newly arrived outstanding scholar. It may serve him right since he tends to spend the time he should be researching an article for publication by going to cocktail parties, watching TV and drinking Chablis. In the other story, an author living in a Spanish apartment house is a workaholic, setting himself a fixed schedule and obsessively researching and writing a novel. Both stories feature dark humor and sarcasm.



In The Motive, the author is so obsessed with finding the right dialog for his novel that he starts spying on his neighbors, seducing the ugly concierge to get information about the tenants and deliberately screwing up a neighbor's career so he will be unable to regain his job. He does this so he can see “what happens” with the stress between the neighbor and his wife. He even plants the idea in their heads of killing an old man in the building to get the money that he keeps in a safe. The twist here is that life starts following art rather than the reverse. It too could have had a stronger ending but both were enjoyable reads.



The author (b. 1962) is best known for his Soldiers of Salamis about the Spanish Civil War. He is Catalan but his books are translated from the Spanish. I enjoyed his novel, The Speed of Light, about an American Vietnam War vet suffering from PTSD. I gave that book a 5 and added it to my favorites.

Here is a link to my review of another book by Javier Cercas:

The Speed of Light

Street scene in Salamanca from shutterstock.net
The author from elcultural.com

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always have problems telling the two Javiers, Cercas and Marías, apart; they’re both from Spain but it can be summed up by saying that Marías is the poignant one who passed away in recent years, while Cercas is the funny one, even when being interviewed. This book consists of two extensive short stories, borderline novellas, which are humorous but fell short for me of being actually funny.

“The Tenant” is about a university professor who while out jogging one day, stumbles and badly sprains his knee. When he returns to his apartment, he finds that his antagonistic female neighbor from across the hall has been replaced by a new and gregarious male one. Soon, he discovers that this new neighbor is a professor at the same university and has somehow replaced him in everything, including his personal life. Without giving anything away, I’ll just say that this is resolved in a way that I felt I’ve seen before, a familiar punchline.

“The Motive” is about a frustrated writer who decides to write a crime novel by manipulating his neighbors into inadvertently acting out the parts of his characters; in this way, he doesn’t have to invent but let his neighbors’ actions construct the story, which he can then report on. As can be expected, it doesn’t quite work out as planned at the end but again, the ending felt like something I’d read before.

The two stories felt strongly influenced by the surprise twists at the end of a Roald Dahl or one of the Alfred Hitchcock fiction anthologies or even a “Twilight Zone” episode – except that when I read or saw these, the idea was still fresh. This book is well done but the twists felt familiar so not so “twisty” as I may have liked.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark humor pervades these 2 novellas. In The Tenant, Mario Rota,a linguistics professor twists and sprains his ankle while he is out for a run and from that moment, his life spirals out of control. He returns home to find a new tenant moving into the apartment across the hall, who turns out to be a reknown linguistics professor (just not known to him). He goes to work the next day and finds this new professor not only working at the same University, but has apparently taken 2 of his courses, been given his office and has stolen his girlfriend. As he struggles to make sense of his new reality, he is warned that he is in imminent danger of losing his job altogether if he does not publish within the next few months.

In The Motive, a part-time lawyer and aspiring writer decides to use his neighbors as inspiration. He allows himself to be seduced by the building concierge to get information on an elderly hermit and a young couple living in the apartment building. He eavesdrops on conversations by the young couple, befriends them and the elderly gentlemen, using them as characters in his new book. But before long he's not only writing about them, he's manipulating his characters in real life so they act out the plot for his book, with grim results.

Both are humorously disturbing. This author definitely has an interesting voice.

[Pascale · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two pointless, amateurish novellas. In the first one, a dull, lazy and oafish university professor fantasizes about being replaced in his job and even in his girlfriend's bed by a cleverer guy. Well, that's what tends to happen in universities, and in life in general. Why such a fate hasn't already overtaken the protagonist is what's not clear. The second story is an even more painful performance, trying as it does to venture on the same terrain as Borges. Again, the protagonist is an idiot, who this time behaves atrociously towards his neighbors, supposedly to get out of them material to write a novel. I felt badly misinformed by the various quotes on the back of the book comparing these incompetent stories with the work of Nabokov and calling him "a profoundly disturbing author." Piffle!

[Anna Baillie-Karas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two novellas by Cercas (whose novel Soldiers of Salamis I want to read). In one, a university professor (the tenant of the title) fears he is being replaced by a new academic who shows up his failings. It made me want to read The Double by Dostoevsky, which I think has a similar theme. In The Motive a writer obsessively watches his neighbours to gain material for a novel, but takes things too far. Witty and spare, I liked these and the somewhat abstract plots reminded me a little of Murakami.

[Fynn Gabriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book go read The Motive so I read the second novella first. It was a really interesting story, if you skip the first chapter rambling about writing and literature. I also really enjoyed the Netflix adaptation El Autor, both easily four stars. However, The Tenant is horribly boring. The plot is good but the protagonist has no depth and the storyline way too stretched out. Once the plot is hinted to it is very foreseeable and it suddenly the story is over. It takes twenty chapters of emotionless storytelling about a character that is not even likeable to get there.

[Philip Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

They were fine really. Probably 2.5.

The Tenant was interesting, because of the crossover with Speed of Light, but doesn't quite take off.
The Motive just doesn't quite take off.

None of it quite feels like later Cercas, he definitely grows into his own style.

[Mary Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the first I have read by Cercas. Wow, what intelligence. Apparently he wrote these novellas before his renown Soldiers of Salamis, and to me it was obvious, particularly in The Motive, that he was exploring the role of the storyteller himself. Life informs literature, but can literature.. a developing story... change the course of the lives that inspired it? Can writing about a person be the moral equivalent of killing them? Fascinating, as was the, was this all a dream surprise, but a well prepared surprise, at the heart of The Tenant. Everything repeats itself. Some great images, the typewriter at the top of a grassy hill. Now that seems appropriate to a young writer's imagination. And great lines,"A text is the author's dialogue with the world and, if one of the two interlocutors disappears, the process is irredeemably mutilated: the text loses its effectiveness."

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two semi-interesting novellas that trade on the space between fantasy and mental illness. The first story concerns a floundering academic who loses a week to either a psychotic episode or a magical trip to a parallel universe. In the second story a misogynist author spies on his fellow tenants to manipulate a murder. Though not totally satisfying, there was enough to keep me reading and at least in the case of the first story develop some empathy for the main character.

[Niko · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very dear friend of mine recommended Cercas to me after he saw my admiration over Marias. Must say I still find the later much more enjoyable, allthough I really liked these two short novels, "The motive" more so. Certainly reading that motivates you to discover author further more. So I guess "Soldiers of Salamis" will be on my book table soon.

[Rise]

Review posted at the link:

http://booktrek.blogspot.com/2014/07/...

[Marie Grassick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit boring really - just got fed up but worked my way through. Will admit it was well written - just not my cup of tea

[Kamalia Kamalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 bintang.