"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 to her, and she begins to suspect that his mysterious job at the Foreign Office is responsible. But it's more than just that: Tomás has unwittingly set in motion events that will derail forever the life they had planned. With unerring insight into the most shadowed corners of the human soul, Marías plunges the reader into the growing chasm between Berta and Tomás and the decisions that irreversibly change the course of the couple's fate. Berta Isla is a novel of love and truth, fear and secrecy, and the destinies we bring upon ourselves"-- Provided by publisher.