THE SHADOW OF THE WIND, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruis Zafon . . . Anything I say about this novel can not approach the experience you will have reading it. And you should read it. My advice to you: take notes. The plot is thick, tangled, and fascinating, connecting even small, unexpected characters the way life does every day. I found myself turning the pages backwards as often as forward.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a genius. He is able to see through the eyes of a young man who speaks with the voice of a poet and receives wisdom from the most unlikely corners of life. I read the translation by Lucia Graves, and the words are elegant, poignant, sometimes startlingly vulgar; clearly, the writer loved every one of them, selecting only the choicest morsels for his readers to devour. Check out his website, and read his explanation for why he writes. Carlos Ruiz Zafon is an artist, and his work-even the gnarly bitter parts--is beautiful.

The novel walks through Barcelona and its layers of history, describing a tangible place affected by true events, occupied by people whose lives--though fictional--are woven into the life of the city itself.  There is a sense of reality in the way changing times impact the characters, in small details like the introduction of television to larger events like the weight of the World War.

But underlying this veracity is a world of shadows, filled with drama, anguish, torment, blood, death, revenge, and all the best elements of a nineteenth-century gothic novel brought into the twentieth-century. It's as though the author is reminding us that even when we think world grows ordinary, familiar, and mundane with the passing of time--even as wires and hard science tell us how the world works--no matter what era we live in, the mystery never truly subsides. There is something in us that yearns for the intensity of greatness: profound love, grotesque horror, devastating loss. Guided by the perspective of a curious young man, readers interact with the city and its people knowing that the presence of otherworldly events and characters is constant, that myth and dreams shape the world as much as bullets and cinema.

And perhaps that is where the book steps in, because a crucial theme of the novel is a love of the actual, physical book: its ability to hide in the depths of the Cemetary of Books, on your own shelf, or somewhere in your past; the contrast of the material printed page and the ethereal word, added to the suspense of the unexpected only discovered if you turn the page. We may be able to translate the content of an authors work into multiple media, but there is something special about the book that transports us and adds to our reading. There is a sense of sadness in the novel as the presence of a modern author's consciousness converses with the narrator of the past, watching the world of books begin to slip away.

I loved this book, and I highly recommend it!

If you liked The Shadow of the Wind, you may also like:

George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
Caleb Carr, The Alienist
Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles