Rereading

 Back in 2021, I read The Maias, Eça de Queiros's mighty masterpiece, all 600-plus pages of it. Now I find myself rereading it, having been asked to write something about it for a literary magazine. I hadn't expected this – indeed I seem to have been so confident I wouldn't be returning to The Maias any time soon that I must have donated it to one of the charity shops: such fat volumes clear a lot of shelf space. It might be lurking somewhere on my chaotically disorganised shelves, but I was unable to find it, so I bought another copy of the same (Carcanet) edition. 
And here I am, immersed again in Eça's sprawling, richly detailed portrait of the life of an aristocratic family in Lisbon during the late 19th-century decline of the Portuguese monarchy and nation. And here's the thing – I'm enjoying it even more this time round than last. It seems to be yielding yet more riches on second reading, and my admiration for Eça's brilliant management of such a huge narrative only grows. Although I know roughly what will happen, I'm every bit as excited as I was first time round, and enjoying Eça's distinctive qualities even more: he is clear-sighted and ironic but forgiving and essentially comic, sometimes satirical but never didactic, and always treading lightly. For all its length, The Maias is immensely readable; you could call it a literary page-turner – and there are a lot of pages to turn. I'm delighted to be reading it again. Nabokov said that 'all reading [meaning real reading] is rereading', and he had a point.