"Pocos meses después de su viaje de novios y sin aún haber podido, o querido, adaptarse a su cambio de estado, Juan se entera casi sin querer de que Teresa, la primera mujer de su padre, se quitó la vida al regreso de su propia luna de miel. Sólo una persona conoce el porqué y ha guardado durante años ese oscuro secreto. A partir de ese momento, el narrador sentirá un creciente malestar --un 'presentimiento de desastre'-- respecto a su recién...

"Berta Isla thought she knew what to expect from life. When she was a young girl she decided she had found her match in Tomás Nevinson--the dashing half-Spanish, half-English boy in her class with an extraordinary gift for languages--so she was even able to endure their time apart while Tomás studied at Oxford. But after his graduation, he returns to Madrid a changed man. Distracted, sullen, and anxious, Berta's new husband has become a stranger...

Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy--its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility--hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence:...