RaveThe Los Angeles Review of Books\"Juan de Vere serves as Marías’s unsentimental yet wisely humane narrator, dusting off freshly excavated secrets and revealing them decades after the fact in this masterful novel, which has been seamlessly translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa ... Thus Bad Begins is an absolute pleasure to read, and Marías is arguably one of Europe’s finest living writers ... Marías’s ability to examine the morality and motivations of the handful of characters populating Thus Bad Begins is as clear eyed as it is nuanced. The tapestry of richly sophisticated themes and startling truths gradually revealed in this novel are not nearly as harrowingly episodic as the themes woven throughout some of Marías’s other celebrated works; however, his insights, illuminations, and astute observations keep the reader thoroughly invested.\
