Status
Available
Collection
Publication
New York : Penguin Press, 2004.
Description
A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written. Barcelona, 1945-just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn't find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly. As with all astounding novels, The Shadow of the Wind sends the mind groping for comparisons- The Crimson Petal and the White? The novels of Arturo Peacute-Reverte? Of Victor Hugo? Love in the Time of Cholera ?-but in the end, as with all astounding novels, no comparison can suffice. As one leading Spanish reviewer wrote, ldquo. The originality of Ruiz Zafoacute's voice is bombproof and displays a diabolical talent. The Shadow of the Wind announces a phenomenon in Spanish literature. An uncannily absorbing historical mystery, a heart-piercing romance, and a moving homage to the mystical power of books, The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller's art.… (more)
Media reviews
It's lowdown and lazy, but here goes: ''Gabriel García Márquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges'' for a sprawling magic show, exasperatingly tricky and mostly wonderful, by the Spanish novelist Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The three illustrious meeters must surely have been drinking and they
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weave about a little, but steady remarkably as the pages go by. Show Less
Biblion
Als een boekverkoper zijn tienjarige zoon meeneemt naar het paleisachtige, geheimzinnige Kerkhof der Vergeten Boeken, raakt Daniel betoverd door De schaduw van de wind. Hij neemt zich voor achter de identiteit van de schrijver Julian Carax te komen. Sterker nog: hij lijkt het leven van deze
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mysterieuze man te gaan leven. Tegen de achtergrond van het Barcelona van de Burgeroorlog en Franco ontrolt zich een fascinerend verhaal, of feitelijk vele verhalen over figuren die zich in de nabijheid van Carax ophielden én mensen rondom Daniel. De structuur van het verhaal is als een Russische pop, die eindeloos veel kleinere poppen in zich heeft verstopt. Carlos Ruiz Zafon (1964) heeft een fantasierijke, knappe roman geschreven vol avontuur, spanning, en liefde, die je in één adem uitleest. Zijn taalgebruik is prachtig, zijn belezenheid groot en de vertaling is vloeiend. Velen zullen van deze onderhoudende, intelligente roman genieten. Show Less
The Shadow of the Wind is a dream date for those who love books.... For fans of Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco and other writers who craft twisting and turning plots with complex characterization, The Shadow of the Wind is not to be missed.
User reviews
LibraryThing member BeckyJG
"Well, this is a story about books."
"About books?"
"About accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow
These words appear just under halfway through The Shadow of the Wind, and are spoken by Daniel Sempere, its narrator. 178 pages earlier, as the story opens, Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Part of this rite of passage is that Daniel must select a book--or, to be more accurate, he must allow a book to select him. With this selection comes the responsibility to keep the book alive, to make sure that it is not forgotten. The book he selects is The Shadow of the Wind, by the mysterious Julian Carax. Daniel reads the novel in one delerious, heated night, and spends the next decade pursuing its author and his story.
But no synopsis could do justice to this rich, gorgeous feast of a novel. Set in post-Civil War Barcelona, The Shadow of the Wind is full of Gothic settings, Victorian characters, Magical Realist flourishes. There are crumbling mansions and equally crumbling aristocratic families, brutal fascist police officers and the political refugees they pursue, girls as beautiful as angels and men so horribly deformed that no one can look them in the face. But, more than anything, there are words.
Ruiz Zafon has an ease with language that most can only envy. Open the book to any page and you will find gorgeous turns of phrase which in lesser hands (and with a lesser translator, one must imagine) would be merely trite and over-written.
Everything good that you've heard about The Shadow of the Wind is true...anything negative must have been said by someone without a touch of whimsy anywhere in his life.
"About books?"
"About accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow
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of the wind."These words appear just under halfway through The Shadow of the Wind, and are spoken by Daniel Sempere, its narrator. 178 pages earlier, as the story opens, Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Part of this rite of passage is that Daniel must select a book--or, to be more accurate, he must allow a book to select him. With this selection comes the responsibility to keep the book alive, to make sure that it is not forgotten. The book he selects is The Shadow of the Wind, by the mysterious Julian Carax. Daniel reads the novel in one delerious, heated night, and spends the next decade pursuing its author and his story.
But no synopsis could do justice to this rich, gorgeous feast of a novel. Set in post-Civil War Barcelona, The Shadow of the Wind is full of Gothic settings, Victorian characters, Magical Realist flourishes. There are crumbling mansions and equally crumbling aristocratic families, brutal fascist police officers and the political refugees they pursue, girls as beautiful as angels and men so horribly deformed that no one can look them in the face. But, more than anything, there are words.
Ruiz Zafon has an ease with language that most can only envy. Open the book to any page and you will find gorgeous turns of phrase which in lesser hands (and with a lesser translator, one must imagine) would be merely trite and over-written.
Everything good that you've heard about The Shadow of the Wind is true...anything negative must have been said by someone without a touch of whimsy anywhere in his life.
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LibraryThing member chuchu
I rarely leave a book unfinished. I find that once I start a book, whether it takes days, months, sometimes years, I'm compelled to read the book to completion. Today I decided that I will not be finishing The Shadow of the Wind. This stuff is pure drivel. With a plot that involves a coming of-age
The language flowery and verbose is incredibly distracting to anything that's going on in the plot. The plot while interesting at first, quickly starts to feel like a lead weight that the author uses to blugeon his readers with. Read The Ghost Writer by John Harwood, if you are in the mood for secrets, betrayal, books, and intrigue.
I honestly can't find anything positive to say about this book, which is rare. But it does solidify my suspicion that sometimes critics don't read every book to completion, especially if the plot sounds enticing and you can use the names Borges, Dickens, Eco, and Marquez in one breath to describe it. If any of the critics that reviewed this book so enthusiasically actually bothered to finish it, then I'd be highly suspicious of their critical reading skills. (One caveat is that my preference is not for classics, which this book reminds me of. But I find many classics to be nuanced while this book is just a shallow imitation with all the bad qualities such as flowery prose).
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story, a secret library, doomed books and romances...I didn't think I'd have to strong-arm myself to turn the page for more than 200 pages. The language flowery and verbose is incredibly distracting to anything that's going on in the plot. The plot while interesting at first, quickly starts to feel like a lead weight that the author uses to blugeon his readers with. Read The Ghost Writer by John Harwood, if you are in the mood for secrets, betrayal, books, and intrigue.
I honestly can't find anything positive to say about this book, which is rare. But it does solidify my suspicion that sometimes critics don't read every book to completion, especially if the plot sounds enticing and you can use the names Borges, Dickens, Eco, and Marquez in one breath to describe it. If any of the critics that reviewed this book so enthusiasically actually bothered to finish it, then I'd be highly suspicious of their critical reading skills. (One caveat is that my preference is not for classics, which this book reminds me of. But I find many classics to be nuanced while this book is just a shallow imitation with all the bad qualities such as flowery prose).
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LibraryThing member Lman
It is difficult to explain the enticement - the bond – for a book lover, when reading a book like The Shadow of the Wind: only that it articulates an exact love of books, and a profound connection to the words within. And as such, it resonates fully with any serious reader, for not only does it
In a broad, all-encompassing tale of life in Barcelona more than half a century ago, in a time of great political upheaval and social distress, it is the story of Daniel Sempere; whose mother died from cholera when he was six, and whose father, the owner of a book store of rare treasures and second-hand collectibles, valiantly strives to nurture his child in a difficult world. At the age of ten, Daniel – in an attempt to assuage his still-lingering grief – is brought one morning, by his father, to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books; to follow a long-standing tradition of adopting a book and therefore “keeping it alive, for life.” The book he chooses is The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax, a little-known and scarcely-published author; but whose book affects Daniel to such a degree that he is driven to find his other writings. And here lies the rub: for someone is steadily and methodically, and by any means, destroying every book this author has ever written; an ominous character even approaching Daniel upfront to buy his copy, otherwise threatening dire consequences. Yet he will not part with the work he feels has chosen him, instead hiding it again in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
Thus Daniel’s adventure begins: as he searches for the answers to his beloved book’s mystery, and that of its author, he learns, simultaneously, over the next ten years, the answers to many of life’s complexities. And it is within this potent mix that the truth is realised, as the world of Daniel, and his friends, coalesces around this book, and the sordid past inherent in its creation.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón constructs, within this tale, a cacophony of irrepressible characters, full of personality and wit, and incredible strength-of-mind and ability to overcome difficult situations; though suffering daily, none are willing to give up or give in. Foremost of these is Fermín Romero de Torres, an incorrigible romantic with a pearl of wisdom, and a very true depth of understanding, for nearly every instance of life; and who is pivotal in unravelling the story behind Julián Carax, and in Daniel’s maturity through his painful adolescent years. Almost, it seems, Fermín is the author’s instrument in disclosing the political and social injustices during, and after, the Spanish civil-war, but tempering the darkness with an exuberance and optimism that is contagious, and life-affirming, despite the conditions of the times. His acumen, in many cases, is worthy reading alone!
The Shadow of the Wind is a concoction of many things: part mystery, part fantasy, part history; it mingles strong desires and passions of life alongside basic bodily functions with such skill, and with such humour, pathos and understanding, that is riveting. Essentially though, to me, it pays homage to the written word, and the power inherent in the pages of a book. And to a reverence for books: where “in truth books have no owners. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.” And in choosing a book "...we adopt it, making sure it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive” even as all else “disappears in the shadow of the wind.” May I find many friends as remarkable, and impressive, as this one, for the rest of my reading life.
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hold a premise that appeals to the heart of a book aficionado, but it offers such an abundance of beautifully-crafted images, that it permeates the soul of the devotee.In a broad, all-encompassing tale of life in Barcelona more than half a century ago, in a time of great political upheaval and social distress, it is the story of Daniel Sempere; whose mother died from cholera when he was six, and whose father, the owner of a book store of rare treasures and second-hand collectibles, valiantly strives to nurture his child in a difficult world. At the age of ten, Daniel – in an attempt to assuage his still-lingering grief – is brought one morning, by his father, to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books; to follow a long-standing tradition of adopting a book and therefore “keeping it alive, for life.” The book he chooses is The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax, a little-known and scarcely-published author; but whose book affects Daniel to such a degree that he is driven to find his other writings. And here lies the rub: for someone is steadily and methodically, and by any means, destroying every book this author has ever written; an ominous character even approaching Daniel upfront to buy his copy, otherwise threatening dire consequences. Yet he will not part with the work he feels has chosen him, instead hiding it again in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
Thus Daniel’s adventure begins: as he searches for the answers to his beloved book’s mystery, and that of its author, he learns, simultaneously, over the next ten years, the answers to many of life’s complexities. And it is within this potent mix that the truth is realised, as the world of Daniel, and his friends, coalesces around this book, and the sordid past inherent in its creation.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón constructs, within this tale, a cacophony of irrepressible characters, full of personality and wit, and incredible strength-of-mind and ability to overcome difficult situations; though suffering daily, none are willing to give up or give in. Foremost of these is Fermín Romero de Torres, an incorrigible romantic with a pearl of wisdom, and a very true depth of understanding, for nearly every instance of life; and who is pivotal in unravelling the story behind Julián Carax, and in Daniel’s maturity through his painful adolescent years. Almost, it seems, Fermín is the author’s instrument in disclosing the political and social injustices during, and after, the Spanish civil-war, but tempering the darkness with an exuberance and optimism that is contagious, and life-affirming, despite the conditions of the times. His acumen, in many cases, is worthy reading alone!
The Shadow of the Wind is a concoction of many things: part mystery, part fantasy, part history; it mingles strong desires and passions of life alongside basic bodily functions with such skill, and with such humour, pathos and understanding, that is riveting. Essentially though, to me, it pays homage to the written word, and the power inherent in the pages of a book. And to a reverence for books: where “in truth books have no owners. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.” And in choosing a book "...we adopt it, making sure it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive” even as all else “disappears in the shadow of the wind.” May I find many friends as remarkable, and impressive, as this one, for the rest of my reading life.
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LibraryThing member nog
Okay, first off, comparisons with Umberto Eco and Jorge Luis Borges are absurd, as anyone who has read several books by those authors would tell you. Those guys write literature, Zafon writes pulp. Now, I don't have any axe to grind about pulp, but this book showcases some absolutely egregious
We're treated to Zafon's relentless metaphor/simile attack throughout the book -- and these are metaphors that would give the instructors at the Iowa Writers' Workshop reason to scold, and scold harshly, once they were through gagging. "I could distinguish the shape of the blue tram, moving away through folds of violet mist." "...conjuring up a halo of amber light that seemed to float in the air like a cobweb trapped between mantles of impenetrable darkness." "...and revealed the dancing shapes of the walls that wept with tears of dampness, the fallen ceilings and dilapidated doors." Those can all be found on one page: 299.
Sometimes this lurid prose fails to make any sort of sense: "The stone, dark and slimy with rain, shone like the skeleton of a huge reptile." (page 415) Richard Eder of the New York Times is the one who praised this book and made the comparisons with Eco, Borges, and Garcia-Marquez. He should know better.
Could the joke be on us? That's what Jennie Yabroff muses about in her review in San Francisco Chronicle. A satire on potboilers? But she has to conclude that Zafon wants us to take him seriously. She calls it a tiring, meandering tale, and I wholeheartedly agree. It consists mostly of one colorful character after another relating their piece of the story, usually in a lengthy remembrance with plenty of non-essential subplots thrown in that puts a halt to any shred of momentum that might build. It just wears the reader out.
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examples of how not to write. My first moment of painful wincing came on page 61: "The same hands that had read my face six years earlier in the gloom of the Ateneo now clutched the maestro's sweat-glazed buttocks, the nails digging into them, as they guided him toward her with desperate, animal desire." We all remember reading similar prose from Eco, don't we? Or was that Borges, in his soft-core porn phase?We're treated to Zafon's relentless metaphor/simile attack throughout the book -- and these are metaphors that would give the instructors at the Iowa Writers' Workshop reason to scold, and scold harshly, once they were through gagging. "I could distinguish the shape of the blue tram, moving away through folds of violet mist." "...conjuring up a halo of amber light that seemed to float in the air like a cobweb trapped between mantles of impenetrable darkness." "...and revealed the dancing shapes of the walls that wept with tears of dampness, the fallen ceilings and dilapidated doors." Those can all be found on one page: 299.
Sometimes this lurid prose fails to make any sort of sense: "The stone, dark and slimy with rain, shone like the skeleton of a huge reptile." (page 415) Richard Eder of the New York Times is the one who praised this book and made the comparisons with Eco, Borges, and Garcia-Marquez. He should know better.
Could the joke be on us? That's what Jennie Yabroff muses about in her review in San Francisco Chronicle. A satire on potboilers? But she has to conclude that Zafon wants us to take him seriously. She calls it a tiring, meandering tale, and I wholeheartedly agree. It consists mostly of one colorful character after another relating their piece of the story, usually in a lengthy remembrance with plenty of non-essential subplots thrown in that puts a halt to any shred of momentum that might build. It just wears the reader out.
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LibraryThing member msbaba
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Záfon is an enchanting work of escapist literature. It is a dark atmospheric novel with unrestrained nineteenth-century literary overtones—a luxuriously layered tale of mystery, intrigue, obsession, seduction, passion, devotion, revenge, loyalty, madness,
The book opens with the young narrator’s father taking him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The father explains to the boy that visitors are allowed to choose a book only if they pledge to keep it alive. Ten-year-old Daniel chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He falls in love with the book and becomes obsessed with finding out as much as he can about its enigmatic author. So our book becomes a mysterious quest to find the truth about Carax—how The Shadow of the Wind came into existence, and ultimately made its way into the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. It is also a captivating coming-of-age tale.
At one point in the novel the main character Daniel, tries to explain to his girlfriend Beatriz his obsession with Carax. He tells her that his obsession is all “about accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who got out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It’s a story of love, of hatred and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.” Beatriz teases Daniel, saying that he talks like “a jacket blurb of a Victorian novel.” And how right she is!
This work does read like a Victorian novel, yet it is set in the period just after the Spanish Civil War. The book delivers a maze of stories within stories most with mysteries behind every revelation. The reader will be reminded of the styles of many long-gone literary giants. But don’t be lulled into expecting too much on account of the novel's florid literary style—if you do you may be disappointed and miss the fun! This is a work of contemporary fiction, not a literary masterpiece. Also, it is not a realistic drama, but melodrama. To enjoy it, you’ll need to turn off your reality sensors and step into a world where good and evil are clear, and characters are larger than life. I am not suggesting that there is fantasy, or surrealism here, merely the exaggerated perceptions of a young man who has not yet reached maturity, a boy who has spent his life reading perhaps a little too much fiction. In this fashion, Daniel’ naïve view of life reminds me of the young Catherine Morland in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
There is much in Záfon’s prose that delights; there is also much that I found poorly executed and over-the-top—but on the whole, the novel is far better than most popular fiction. There is plenty to enjoy in this almost-500-page novel…but if you prefer, listen to the sumptuous unabridged audio version (16 CDs, 19 hours) where the reading is frequently accompanied by original music composed by the author to enhance the mood and adds to the melodrama. The reader, Jonathan Davis, is outstanding. Listening to this novel accentuates its sensory experience!
Although Záfon was born in Barcelona, he has spend almost the last two decades living in Los Angeles, making a living as a television screenwriter. This is his debut novel. Originally written in Spanish and published in Spain, the book was translated into English by the talented Lucia Graves, daughter of the famous British literary giant, Robert Graves. Záfon admits that he has a lifelong fascination for 19th-century English literature. But his first love is great storytelling, wherever he finds it—in books, television, or movies. He has spent a great deal of time painstakingly deconstructing the world’s best storytellers to discover their secrets.
This novel has become an international bestseller because the author learned his lessons well and does seem to possess some magical inside track to the art of great storytelling. With time, he should get even better. I recommend this book highly and look forward to the author’s next novel.
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and everlasting love. Most importantly, it is a book about books—about the power of books to alter lives. Most book lovers will fall under its spell within a few brief pages.The book opens with the young narrator’s father taking him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The father explains to the boy that visitors are allowed to choose a book only if they pledge to keep it alive. Ten-year-old Daniel chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He falls in love with the book and becomes obsessed with finding out as much as he can about its enigmatic author. So our book becomes a mysterious quest to find the truth about Carax—how The Shadow of the Wind came into existence, and ultimately made its way into the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. It is also a captivating coming-of-age tale.
At one point in the novel the main character Daniel, tries to explain to his girlfriend Beatriz his obsession with Carax. He tells her that his obsession is all “about accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who got out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It’s a story of love, of hatred and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.” Beatriz teases Daniel, saying that he talks like “a jacket blurb of a Victorian novel.” And how right she is!
This work does read like a Victorian novel, yet it is set in the period just after the Spanish Civil War. The book delivers a maze of stories within stories most with mysteries behind every revelation. The reader will be reminded of the styles of many long-gone literary giants. But don’t be lulled into expecting too much on account of the novel's florid literary style—if you do you may be disappointed and miss the fun! This is a work of contemporary fiction, not a literary masterpiece. Also, it is not a realistic drama, but melodrama. To enjoy it, you’ll need to turn off your reality sensors and step into a world where good and evil are clear, and characters are larger than life. I am not suggesting that there is fantasy, or surrealism here, merely the exaggerated perceptions of a young man who has not yet reached maturity, a boy who has spent his life reading perhaps a little too much fiction. In this fashion, Daniel’ naïve view of life reminds me of the young Catherine Morland in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
There is much in Záfon’s prose that delights; there is also much that I found poorly executed and over-the-top—but on the whole, the novel is far better than most popular fiction. There is plenty to enjoy in this almost-500-page novel…but if you prefer, listen to the sumptuous unabridged audio version (16 CDs, 19 hours) where the reading is frequently accompanied by original music composed by the author to enhance the mood and adds to the melodrama. The reader, Jonathan Davis, is outstanding. Listening to this novel accentuates its sensory experience!
Although Záfon was born in Barcelona, he has spend almost the last two decades living in Los Angeles, making a living as a television screenwriter. This is his debut novel. Originally written in Spanish and published in Spain, the book was translated into English by the talented Lucia Graves, daughter of the famous British literary giant, Robert Graves. Záfon admits that he has a lifelong fascination for 19th-century English literature. But his first love is great storytelling, wherever he finds it—in books, television, or movies. He has spent a great deal of time painstakingly deconstructing the world’s best storytellers to discover their secrets.
This novel has become an international bestseller because the author learned his lessons well and does seem to possess some magical inside track to the art of great storytelling. With time, he should get even better. I recommend this book highly and look forward to the author’s next novel.
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LibraryThing member Smiler69
In this wonderful gothic novel, set in post-Spanish Civil War Barcelona, our young narrator Daniel is about to go through a passage of rites. His father, an antique book dealer, is leading the boy to the mysterious and secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There, he instructs his son to choose only
Along the way, as Daniel encounters numerous fascinating characters, we are taken back to Julián Carax's youth when, as a poor hatmaker's son, he was taken under the wing of a powerful businessman, and fell in love with at first sight with the man's daughter on his first visit to his sponsor's haunted mansion, thus setting in motion the train of events which Daniel uncovers, as he finds one clue after another. A tale of love, loss and obsession, about the bonds of friendship and the quest for revenge, truth and redemption, this is a richly told, multilayered story which satisfies at every page.
Please note the only reason I didn't give this book five stars is that I found the English translation wanting, though this is no fault of the translator; I look forward to reading the story again in the French translation, which will presumably better express the latin passion and immediacy of the original Spanish text. Regardless, the story itself transcends language, and I can't recommend this novel strongly enough.
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one book, which Daniel will be responsible for the rest of his life. He finds a small book called The Shadow of the Wind by an obscure writer, Julián Carax. Daniel becomes completely engrossed in the story, but when he attempts to find other books by the author, he discovers that a sinister man, posing as one of the characters from the book, is seeking out and burning every copy of every book by Carax he can get his hands on. Our young hero then goes on the trail of the writer, who has been shot dead long ago, as he seeks answers to this strange mystery. Along the way, as Daniel encounters numerous fascinating characters, we are taken back to Julián Carax's youth when, as a poor hatmaker's son, he was taken under the wing of a powerful businessman, and fell in love with at first sight with the man's daughter on his first visit to his sponsor's haunted mansion, thus setting in motion the train of events which Daniel uncovers, as he finds one clue after another. A tale of love, loss and obsession, about the bonds of friendship and the quest for revenge, truth and redemption, this is a richly told, multilayered story which satisfies at every page.
Please note the only reason I didn't give this book five stars is that I found the English translation wanting, though this is no fault of the translator; I look forward to reading the story again in the French translation, which will presumably better express the latin passion and immediacy of the original Spanish text. Regardless, the story itself transcends language, and I can't recommend this novel strongly enough.
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LibraryThing member Widsith
Dire. The writing is along Dan Brown lines, with flowery metaphors mixed until they become meaningless. From page 1: "My father sighed, hiding behind the sad smile that followed him like a shadow all through his life." How can he be hiding behind it if it's following him? Then on the next page
The whole thing feels like it desperately wants be seen as some kind of profound parable, but the only result is that the characters are just implausible symbols. They are too bland even to hate – unlike the book itself, which I loathed.
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someone is described as having "vulturine features", but in the following sentence he has an "aquiline gaze". This sloppiness is everywhere.The whole thing feels like it desperately wants be seen as some kind of profound parable, but the only result is that the characters are just implausible symbols. They are too bland even to hate – unlike the book itself, which I loathed.
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LibraryThing member rebachin
I'm finishing up The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron as I type this, unsure of how exactly to respond, because I am unsure of how it will end! It is definitely a climatic ending!!
About an hour back in the book, the question** occured to me; Is this completely devoted, self-sacrificing
**I have begun to believe that when a book is good, it leaves me with a thoughtful, insightful, contemplative question or conviction.
Man! I'll tell you - Don't think you have the book figured out until you have reached the last page, I don't care how good you think you are. I kept thinking I could see the bends and twists in the plot ahead of time, but I don't think I got any of them right.
And such a variety of characters - noble & self-sacrificing, greedy, naive, bitter & jealous, twisted & sadistic... you see it all, and there is a little bit of everything in the plot - love, romance, mystery, frustration, anger... passion, heartache, emotion, uncertainty, and intrigue.
I recommend this book without hesitation.
What a perfect, and beautiful circle of a story.
About an hour back in the book, the question** occured to me; Is this completely devoted, self-sacrificing
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exhibit of love actually real, or does it only exist in the make-believe? Could you starve yourself of all life and passion save that of the one person to whom your heart is devoted to.**I have begun to believe that when a book is good, it leaves me with a thoughtful, insightful, contemplative question or conviction.
Man! I'll tell you - Don't think you have the book figured out until you have reached the last page, I don't care how good you think you are. I kept thinking I could see the bends and twists in the plot ahead of time, but I don't think I got any of them right.
And such a variety of characters - noble & self-sacrificing, greedy, naive, bitter & jealous, twisted & sadistic... you see it all, and there is a little bit of everything in the plot - love, romance, mystery, frustration, anger... passion, heartache, emotion, uncertainty, and intrigue.
I recommend this book without hesitation.
What a perfect, and beautiful circle of a story.
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LibraryThing member readingwithtea
Having seen this available for £1 at a Lancaster book stall, I had to pick it up after everything that I’ve heard about it over the years.
The writing itself is excellent – “flashing a mysterious smile probably borrowed from the pages of one of his worn Alexandre Dumas romances” is one of
Similarly, I loved the fact that I could follow the places in the book – I’ve been to Barcelona (only once, and only for a week), but fortunately the book was mostly set in the centre of town and out towards the area where I stayed when I was there, so I recognised many of the place names and the character of the city, which Zafón represents very well.
I struggled with the plot – the sheer number of childhood romances and implausible pregnancies bugged me, as did the jumpy timeline. The book is full of adventure and intrigue and all those wonderful plot ingredients, which I can see appealing to both male and female readers of all ages. I can certainly understand why this is a favourite with readers the world over, and I enjoyed the book, but it’s not right up there in the “I’m going to bully everyone I know into reading this” category.
The writing itself is excellent – “flashing a mysterious smile probably borrowed from the pages of one of his worn Alexandre Dumas romances” is one of
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my favourite phrases of the book. Zafón distinguishes well between the voices of different characters (which, given the number of flashbacks and retellings of events by other characters, is pretty important) and while the characters are all very individual, none of them is ridiculous.Similarly, I loved the fact that I could follow the places in the book – I’ve been to Barcelona (only once, and only for a week), but fortunately the book was mostly set in the centre of town and out towards the area where I stayed when I was there, so I recognised many of the place names and the character of the city, which Zafón represents very well.
I struggled with the plot – the sheer number of childhood romances and implausible pregnancies bugged me, as did the jumpy timeline. The book is full of adventure and intrigue and all those wonderful plot ingredients, which I can see appealing to both male and female readers of all ages. I can certainly understand why this is a favourite with readers the world over, and I enjoyed the book, but it’s not right up there in the “I’m going to bully everyone I know into reading this” category.
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LibraryThing member writestuff
This book has sat on my "to-be-read" shelf for a long time - and after reading it I wonder how I could have let it linger so long unread. The Shadow of the Wind is a rich tapestry of writing - a Gothic tale of love and mystery, of betrayal and suspense. Zafon's sense of place never wavers. The
Zafon captures the reader quickly. When Daniel, a ten year old boy, is brought to a mysterious place called The Cemetery of Books, his father swears him to secrecy and then explains: "According to tradition, the first time someone visits this place, he must choose a book, whichever one he wants, and adopt it, making sure that it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive. It's a very important promise. For life," explained my father. "Today it's your turn."
Daniel chooses a book - or perhaps the book chooses him. It is a book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, written by Julian Carax and it entrances the boy and takes him on a convoluted journey which is swathed in mystery. Who is the man with no face who has set out to destroy every book every written by Julian Carax? What became of the author?
Zafon's novel is filled with memorable characters - my favorite being Fermin Romero de Torres, a homeless man saved from the gutter by Daniel and his father and who comes with a dark and cryptic history of his own. Fermin's wonderful philosophy of life, filled with bawdy humor made me laugh out loud at times.
The novel's plot is twisting - weaving back in time and making unexpected turns. No one is who they seem to be. Characters in Daniel's found novel become intertwined with people he knows or has known. Zafon keeps the reader guessing with his compelling and dramatic story filled with betrayal, murder, missing people and romance.
The Shadow of the Wind is a giant of a book and a must read for bibliophiles and those who love epics with a Gothic flavor.
Highly Recommended.
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reader is pulled into the setting and enveloped in the dark, crumbling mansions and the candlelit hallways of post-war Barcelona.Zafon captures the reader quickly. When Daniel, a ten year old boy, is brought to a mysterious place called The Cemetery of Books, his father swears him to secrecy and then explains: "According to tradition, the first time someone visits this place, he must choose a book, whichever one he wants, and adopt it, making sure that it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive. It's a very important promise. For life," explained my father. "Today it's your turn."
Daniel chooses a book - or perhaps the book chooses him. It is a book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, written by Julian Carax and it entrances the boy and takes him on a convoluted journey which is swathed in mystery. Who is the man with no face who has set out to destroy every book every written by Julian Carax? What became of the author?
Zafon's novel is filled with memorable characters - my favorite being Fermin Romero de Torres, a homeless man saved from the gutter by Daniel and his father and who comes with a dark and cryptic history of his own. Fermin's wonderful philosophy of life, filled with bawdy humor made me laugh out loud at times.
The novel's plot is twisting - weaving back in time and making unexpected turns. No one is who they seem to be. Characters in Daniel's found novel become intertwined with people he knows or has known. Zafon keeps the reader guessing with his compelling and dramatic story filled with betrayal, murder, missing people and romance.
The Shadow of the Wind is a giant of a book and a must read for bibliophiles and those who love epics with a Gothic flavor.
Highly Recommended.
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LibraryThing member karieh
It seems as if nearly every quote on this book references Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I’ve only read One Hundred Years of Solitude but I agree…this book does have distinct similarities. The lushness of the prose, the larger than life characters, the background sense of a fairy tale that makes the
But I detected the whiff of musty rotting lace even stronger than that. Dickens’s Great Expectations seemed to me a much closer relative to “The Shadow of the Wind”. The sense of the past being relived in the future, the idea that the young characters whose lives are ostensibly the focus of the book being only the newer versions of those who have gone before them…not to mention the constant theme of forbidden love.
This book in all senses is a book about time gone by. It is about passions that are larger than life, all consuming hatred, soul destroying despair. Nothing is small; no character is simply a bystander, no event without meaning. The writing drips with color without being too flowery, the words evoke one’s senses while still allowing the reader to bring his/her own imagination to the table. One feels as if this is a story that has always existed, has always been played out…I could almost feel the dust on the book jacket of my brand new copy of this novel.
I appreciate, too, the underlying theme of the love of books, of words. When one encounters “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books”, I felt my hands itching to go there, to see the shelves and shelves of treasures. Books and the power of their words come up again and again, which is an idea I can certainly appreciate.
“Once, in my father’s bookstore, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a place in our memory to which, sooner or later – no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget – we will return.”
While being an engrossing story that kept me turning the pages more than taking notes, the story, whose main timeline takes place in Barcelona in 1955, offers a few very prescient views of the future:
“Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”
(As a side note, the author does pull one of those plot tricks that I am VERY dubious about. One of those, “In seven days time, SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT WILL HAPPEN” warnings. As an avid reader of Stephen King, I have become very wary of those dire predictions…and I still haven’t made up my mind whether they improve or harm the flow of the story, though I am leaning towards harm.)
The sense of history repeating itself comes up not only in the lives of the characters but in references to the world in general. “Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and the try and convince us that what we’ve seen, what we’ve done, what we’ve learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”
“The Shadow of the Wind” was a wonderful book to curl up with these past few days. I liked getting to enjoy damsels in distress, mysterious figures in the shadows, deathbed confessions, duels at dawn, the constant struggle of love trying to overcome hate…and an actual villain with no redeeming qualities. So often the books that I read, because they are generally based in reality, examine all of the shades of grey that make up human beings. I’d forgotten what an escape it is to very easily identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book with a scene like this that I could enjoy instead of rolling my eyes, “When I peered into the corridor, I could already hear the footsteps below, near the staircase. I recognized the spidery shadow on the walls, the black raincoat, the hat pulled down like a hood, and the gun in his hand shining like a scythe. Fumero. He had always reminded me of someone, or something, but until then I hadn’t understood what.”
You can just smell the musty odors, see the dripping candle wax, feel the mysterious breeze go past your face, can’t you?
This book gives one the sense of a guilty pleasure without giving any reason to feel guilty. It is a wonderful story, one that should be dusted off time and time again.
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reader sure that at some point s/he read the words “Once Upon a Time”…But I detected the whiff of musty rotting lace even stronger than that. Dickens’s Great Expectations seemed to me a much closer relative to “The Shadow of the Wind”. The sense of the past being relived in the future, the idea that the young characters whose lives are ostensibly the focus of the book being only the newer versions of those who have gone before them…not to mention the constant theme of forbidden love.
This book in all senses is a book about time gone by. It is about passions that are larger than life, all consuming hatred, soul destroying despair. Nothing is small; no character is simply a bystander, no event without meaning. The writing drips with color without being too flowery, the words evoke one’s senses while still allowing the reader to bring his/her own imagination to the table. One feels as if this is a story that has always existed, has always been played out…I could almost feel the dust on the book jacket of my brand new copy of this novel.
I appreciate, too, the underlying theme of the love of books, of words. When one encounters “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books”, I felt my hands itching to go there, to see the shelves and shelves of treasures. Books and the power of their words come up again and again, which is an idea I can certainly appreciate.
“Once, in my father’s bookstore, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a place in our memory to which, sooner or later – no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget – we will return.”
While being an engrossing story that kept me turning the pages more than taking notes, the story, whose main timeline takes place in Barcelona in 1955, offers a few very prescient views of the future:
“Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”
(As a side note, the author does pull one of those plot tricks that I am VERY dubious about. One of those, “In seven days time, SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT WILL HAPPEN” warnings. As an avid reader of Stephen King, I have become very wary of those dire predictions…and I still haven’t made up my mind whether they improve or harm the flow of the story, though I am leaning towards harm.)
The sense of history repeating itself comes up not only in the lives of the characters but in references to the world in general. “Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and the try and convince us that what we’ve seen, what we’ve done, what we’ve learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”
“The Shadow of the Wind” was a wonderful book to curl up with these past few days. I liked getting to enjoy damsels in distress, mysterious figures in the shadows, deathbed confessions, duels at dawn, the constant struggle of love trying to overcome hate…and an actual villain with no redeeming qualities. So often the books that I read, because they are generally based in reality, examine all of the shades of grey that make up human beings. I’d forgotten what an escape it is to very easily identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book with a scene like this that I could enjoy instead of rolling my eyes, “When I peered into the corridor, I could already hear the footsteps below, near the staircase. I recognized the spidery shadow on the walls, the black raincoat, the hat pulled down like a hood, and the gun in his hand shining like a scythe. Fumero. He had always reminded me of someone, or something, but until then I hadn’t understood what.”
You can just smell the musty odors, see the dripping candle wax, feel the mysterious breeze go past your face, can’t you?
This book gives one the sense of a guilty pleasure without giving any reason to feel guilty. It is a wonderful story, one that should be dusted off time and time again.
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LibraryThing member SharronA
A real challenge to read -- hard to maintain interest when there's only 10 pages of plot in every 100 pages of text. It would have made a terrific short story! There was little character development and virtually no suspense, with the "surprise" ending hinted at so broadly throughout the book. The
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villain was perhaps the best part, but not enough to sustain 486 rambling pages. Show Less
LibraryThing member funkendub
The Shadow of the Wind is a dream date for those who love books. It starts, in 1945, with the introduction of the young narrator, Daniel, to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Daniel’s father, a dealer of used and rare books in Barcelona, tells the young boy, “When a library disappears, or a
Entranced by the novel, young Daniel sets out to discover who this Carax was, and what else he wrote. Daniel’s father, the book dealer, has never heard of Carax. Together they consult other dealers. One offers Daniel a considerable sum of money for his copy of The Shadow of the Wind—but won’t say why he prizes it so highly. Daniel, though, refuses to sell the book.
Years go by. Daniel hears a story about Carax and his books. Someone is going from town to town, shop to shop, seeking out the works of Julián Carax—and burning them. But who would do such a thing—and why? As Daniel matures, so does the mystery.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s novel is a love story of several layers of significance. There’s the adolescent Daniel, coming of age in Franco’s Spain, and doing what young boys do: listlessly lusting after young women. Daniel’s relationships, first with the blind girl, Clara, and later with his best friend’s sister, Bea, are also bonds of literary friendship: books, like beds, allow lovers to share sheets. As Daniel tells Bea one evening over a couple of coffees:
…this is a story about books.”
“About books?”
“About accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”
But is the burner of Carax’s novels really Carax? As Daniel grows—both in life and into the investigation of his beloved The Shadow of the Wind—he discovers that Carax died years ago. It appears that Carax died, as Daniel has felt he surely would, of a broken heart. And yet, what if…?
“And yet, what if…?” is, of course, precisely what propels a reader through a great novel like Zafón’s. The wind of speculation keeps blowing shadows of mystery down the side streets, pulling us on into the labyrinth in pursuit of the story of the novel within the novel. Zafón is a great-hearted writer, keenly aware that books are bits of soul-stuff and just as prone to the vicissitudes of time and place as are their human authors and readers. Zafón sketches character and context beautifully, working in the political reality of Franco’s dictatorship with candor and humor, but without ever making a spectacle of life in a totalitarian regime. A bestseller in Spain, The Shadow of the Wind is craftily translated by the daughter of Robert Graves, Lucia Graves. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been very well received in the U.S., where the thriller genre has been stupefied by the likes of ignoramus Michael Crichton. The Shadow of the Wind harks back to an era when characters changed—not by growing an extra arm, but changed psychologically, seeing the world as the dangerous and potentially redemptive place it is. For fans of Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco and other writers who craft twisting and turning plots with complex characterization, The Shadow of the Wind is not to be missed.
Originally published in Curled Up with a Good Book
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bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here.” In the Cemetery, “books that are lost in time, live forever…. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.” Mourning the loss of his mother, Daniel befriends a book he finds there, The Shadow of the Wind, written by a certain Julián Carax.Entranced by the novel, young Daniel sets out to discover who this Carax was, and what else he wrote. Daniel’s father, the book dealer, has never heard of Carax. Together they consult other dealers. One offers Daniel a considerable sum of money for his copy of The Shadow of the Wind—but won’t say why he prizes it so highly. Daniel, though, refuses to sell the book.
Years go by. Daniel hears a story about Carax and his books. Someone is going from town to town, shop to shop, seeking out the works of Julián Carax—and burning them. But who would do such a thing—and why? As Daniel matures, so does the mystery.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s novel is a love story of several layers of significance. There’s the adolescent Daniel, coming of age in Franco’s Spain, and doing what young boys do: listlessly lusting after young women. Daniel’s relationships, first with the blind girl, Clara, and later with his best friend’s sister, Bea, are also bonds of literary friendship: books, like beds, allow lovers to share sheets. As Daniel tells Bea one evening over a couple of coffees:
…this is a story about books.”
“About books?”
“About accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”
But is the burner of Carax’s novels really Carax? As Daniel grows—both in life and into the investigation of his beloved The Shadow of the Wind—he discovers that Carax died years ago. It appears that Carax died, as Daniel has felt he surely would, of a broken heart. And yet, what if…?
“And yet, what if…?” is, of course, precisely what propels a reader through a great novel like Zafón’s. The wind of speculation keeps blowing shadows of mystery down the side streets, pulling us on into the labyrinth in pursuit of the story of the novel within the novel. Zafón is a great-hearted writer, keenly aware that books are bits of soul-stuff and just as prone to the vicissitudes of time and place as are their human authors and readers. Zafón sketches character and context beautifully, working in the political reality of Franco’s dictatorship with candor and humor, but without ever making a spectacle of life in a totalitarian regime. A bestseller in Spain, The Shadow of the Wind is craftily translated by the daughter of Robert Graves, Lucia Graves. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been very well received in the U.S., where the thriller genre has been stupefied by the likes of ignoramus Michael Crichton. The Shadow of the Wind harks back to an era when characters changed—not by growing an extra arm, but changed psychologically, seeing the world as the dangerous and potentially redemptive place it is. For fans of Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco and other writers who craft twisting and turning plots with complex characterization, The Shadow of the Wind is not to be missed.
Originally published in Curled Up with a Good Book
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LibraryThing member bethie-paige
A book about books. Absolute perfection. :)
I fell in love after 10 pages. His writing style is gorgeous and captivating. I felt myself get lost inside his world of words.
His storytelling was incredible. I loved the way he would intertwine all these people's stories to make one amazing journey.
I
His story writing is just so amazing. I didn't want it to end. I'm so glad I decided to pick this book up. I want to read more of his books.
I fell in love after 10 pages. His writing style is gorgeous and captivating. I felt myself get lost inside his world of words.
His storytelling was incredible. I loved the way he would intertwine all these people's stories to make one amazing journey.
I
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felt so connected to Daniel and his search to solve the mystery of Julian Carax. I loved the connection with Victor Hugo's pen. That was so ingenious. His story writing is just so amazing. I didn't want it to end. I'm so glad I decided to pick this book up. I want to read more of his books.
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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
In 1945 Barcelona, Daniel Sempere, a ten-year-old boy, is taken by his bookseller father to "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books," told never to tell anyone about it, and to choose a book off its shelves to which he'll always be the guardian. He chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He's
I loved the concept of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books when I first encountered it, and the opening chapter that bore it's name, but among the disappointments of the novel is I felt it went no where. Many people adore this book; a close friend whose tastes I trust, if not always mirror, told me she hated it, and that among those reasons is how Daniel betrays that secret. Well before that he betrayed his guardianship by at one point giving the book away to a woman he has a crush on. But what I couldn't forgive was how the whole concept was developed, or not developed. Who chooses the books? Why aren't you supposed to tell anyone? To whom and for what purpose is the secret revealed? But you know when I really wanted to throw this book across the room? When Daniel takes someone back to that "Cemetery" of Forgotten books, he tells her to choose one, just as his father told him to choose one. And what does she choose? Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles! In what alternate universe is that a forgotten book? In that one choice, Zafon transformed a magical mystical place into... a used bookstore.
A petty point, I know, but it's hardly the only hole or improbability in the book. I've seen reviewers defend those lapses as "magical realism." I see nothing magical or realistic in this convoluted tale. I haven't read Marquez or Borges, whom I've seen Zafon compared to, but I have read Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Joanne Harris, Toni Morrison, and Alice Hoffman, and when they insert magic into their narratives, you know it--it's not an excuse for a muddled or implausible plot.
I've also read the events are meant to be a tribute to the Gothic tradition. Stephen King calls the book "full of cheesy splendor." Well, I'm all for that kind of cheese. I found Matthew Lewis' The Monk and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White and Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale and even some novels of Stephen King great fun, but this novel fell flat to me.
I also wasn't wild about the style. Here's a typical sentence from a random page: The steely sun snatched copper reflections from the roofs and belfries of the Gothic quarter. It's the kind of prose some might see as poetic and lyrical, and others as florid and purple. I'm on the purple side of the fence, and I don't think you can blame the author's pile-on of adjectives on the translation. Or the chunks of narrative in italics--an effect by itself I find cheesy and annoying. Or the soft porn sex scene early on.
I'm afraid when it comes to this one, I'm in the decided minority of detractors--even if I at least I can console myself I'm in good company with my friend.
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entranced by the novel and tries to find other books by the author, but finds out few ever were printed and sold, and a mysterious figure calling himself after one of Carax's characters is burning every copy of the books he can find. I loved the concept of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books when I first encountered it, and the opening chapter that bore it's name, but among the disappointments of the novel is I felt it went no where. Many people adore this book; a close friend whose tastes I trust, if not always mirror, told me she hated it, and that among those reasons is how Daniel betrays that secret. Well before that he betrayed his guardianship by at one point giving the book away to a woman he has a crush on. But what I couldn't forgive was how the whole concept was developed, or not developed. Who chooses the books? Why aren't you supposed to tell anyone? To whom and for what purpose is the secret revealed? But you know when I really wanted to throw this book across the room? When Daniel takes someone back to that "Cemetery" of Forgotten books, he tells her to choose one, just as his father told him to choose one. And what does she choose? Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles! In what alternate universe is that a forgotten book? In that one choice, Zafon transformed a magical mystical place into... a used bookstore.
A petty point, I know, but it's hardly the only hole or improbability in the book. I've seen reviewers defend those lapses as "magical realism." I see nothing magical or realistic in this convoluted tale. I haven't read Marquez or Borges, whom I've seen Zafon compared to, but I have read Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Joanne Harris, Toni Morrison, and Alice Hoffman, and when they insert magic into their narratives, you know it--it's not an excuse for a muddled or implausible plot.
I've also read the events are meant to be a tribute to the Gothic tradition. Stephen King calls the book "full of cheesy splendor." Well, I'm all for that kind of cheese. I found Matthew Lewis' The Monk and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White and Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale and even some novels of Stephen King great fun, but this novel fell flat to me.
I also wasn't wild about the style. Here's a typical sentence from a random page: The steely sun snatched copper reflections from the roofs and belfries of the Gothic quarter. It's the kind of prose some might see as poetic and lyrical, and others as florid and purple. I'm on the purple side of the fence, and I don't think you can blame the author's pile-on of adjectives on the translation. Or the chunks of narrative in italics--an effect by itself I find cheesy and annoying. Or the soft porn sex scene early on.
I'm afraid when it comes to this one, I'm in the decided minority of detractors--even if I at least I can console myself I'm in good company with my friend.
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LibraryThing member mrtall
The Shadow of the Wind is a middlebrow romance/potboiler that has benefited from a sheen of association with superior novels by much better writers.
The best summation of the book’s charms, such as they are, comes from the very first blurb on the back of my copy. It’s from Stephen King, who
For this is a supremely cheesy story, blending over-the-top Gothic settings and atmosphere with Boys’ Own characterizations with Harlequinesque romance and erotic flashes. What mystifies me is the comparisons others (e.g. The New York Times Book Review) have made between this book and far superior works such as Umberto Eco’s. Yes, I suppose there is a big ol’ dark musty library in this novel, so it must be just like The Name of the Rose . . . well, perhaps not.
In short, The Shadow of the Wind follows the adventures of Daniel, a young boy in mid-20th century Barcelona. He grows up in a bookstore, and his equally bookish father introduces him to a mysterious library from which he’s allowed to choose one volume; it turns out to be an almost magical novel whose backstory Daniel traces out through the remainder of the plot.
And as we work through nearly 500 pages of florid descriptions punctuated by 'blinding' (but utterly unsurprising) revelations, epic are the adventures of the courageous men and ravishing women; pure and holy are their loves; smoldering are their passions; dark is the doom that hangs over them . . . oh man, I’ve had enough of this. Let’s just say that Ruiz Zafon overwrites shamelessly, then subjects his readers to a lengthy and startlingly prosaic dénouement that undermines whatever sense of mystery and dread he manages to build up in the book’s first three-quarters.
After finally finishing The Shadow of the Wind, I felt an immediate need to cleanse my reading palate with something cool, fresh and bracing. It’s time for some Raymond Chandler.
The best summation of the book’s charms, such as they are, comes from the very first blurb on the back of my copy. It’s from Stephen King, who
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calls this lengthy tome (a subject on which King is undoubtedly expert) ‘a novel full of cheesy splendor’. Just so.For this is a supremely cheesy story, blending over-the-top Gothic settings and atmosphere with Boys’ Own characterizations with Harlequinesque romance and erotic flashes. What mystifies me is the comparisons others (e.g. The New York Times Book Review) have made between this book and far superior works such as Umberto Eco’s. Yes, I suppose there is a big ol’ dark musty library in this novel, so it must be just like The Name of the Rose . . . well, perhaps not.
In short, The Shadow of the Wind follows the adventures of Daniel, a young boy in mid-20th century Barcelona. He grows up in a bookstore, and his equally bookish father introduces him to a mysterious library from which he’s allowed to choose one volume; it turns out to be an almost magical novel whose backstory Daniel traces out through the remainder of the plot.
And as we work through nearly 500 pages of florid descriptions punctuated by 'blinding' (but utterly unsurprising) revelations, epic are the adventures of the courageous men and ravishing women; pure and holy are their loves; smoldering are their passions; dark is the doom that hangs over them . . . oh man, I’ve had enough of this. Let’s just say that Ruiz Zafon overwrites shamelessly, then subjects his readers to a lengthy and startlingly prosaic dénouement that undermines whatever sense of mystery and dread he manages to build up in the book’s first three-quarters.
After finally finishing The Shadow of the Wind, I felt an immediate need to cleanse my reading palate with something cool, fresh and bracing. It’s time for some Raymond Chandler.
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LibraryThing member LARA335
I expected to love this novel: set in the past,a mystery about books, a doomed love affair, with gothic undertones... But by page 230 I was so ungripped I told myself I could abandon it on a train. But I don't do that sort of thing, so slogged on.
I felt it was less a mystery, more that most of the
Can't for the life of me understand why this was a best-seller.
I felt it was less a mystery, more that most of the
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characters were in dire need of psychiatric counselling. I think I was so disengaged because the novel was pushed forward by introduction of a new character time and again who related their story. And books that generally grab me are ones that 'show, don't tell'.Can't for the life of me understand why this was a best-seller.
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LibraryThing member atheist_goat
Oh, the love. It’s a big sprawling cheesy Dickensian melodrama about reading and falling in love with a big sprawling cheesy Dickensian melodrama. The soap opera denouements are seen coming miles away, and I think that’s intended, and you tear through the chapters because you want to get to
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them. The premise alone - there's a building called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where if you are permitted in you must choose one book and then be that book’s guardian and preserver for the rest of your life, and the devil figure goes around burning books - is enough for me, but it’s also wonderfully written. Show Less
LibraryThing member eggsnhm
I just don't understand all the hoopla. I was hard pressed to read more than a hundred pages before I gave up and took my life back. I found this novel utterly disengaging.
LibraryThing member ceruleandaze
Wonderful book and deep, intriguing story that takes you on a journey into history and love and coming of age, centered around a "Cemetery of Forgotten Books". Barcelona is a perfect setting, too; a city steeped in history and emotions, and shadows. You never know what to expect; nothing is as it
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seems as the story unfolds and the characters reveal themselves. The writing is superb, too, so flowing and rich, especially noteworthy considering this is a translation (by Lucia Graves, from the original Spanish). A book to savor, for sure... I'd read some pages, then stop to soak it all in, before moving on again. Sure, you can read it fast, but what's the hurry, what's the point? Some books were written to take you on a journey not so easily forgotten. This is one of those.Originally written on Nov 23, 2008 at 09:26AM Show Less
LibraryThing member jmyers24
"The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (tranlation by Lucia Graves) is a wonderfully intricate book with winding plots and fascinating characters. The story opens in 1945 when ten-year-old Daniel visits the Cemetery of Forgotten Books with his father, a bookseller, and becomes the caretaker
This is a marvelous drama inhabited by characters we come to care about. It has history, mystery, suspense, romance, friendship, and family. It has the extremes of love and hate, and a good deal of philosophy, all rolled into an arresting literary adventure you won't want to put down until you're reached the final page.
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of the novel "The Shadow of the Wind" by Julian Carax. From the first few lines Daniel becomes hooked and is drawn into a search to find out all he can about the book's mysterious author who reportedly had died in a duel in Paris. From there the plot moves on as Daniel grows up and makes new friends as well as enemies, falls in love, and watches as Barcelona in slowly drawn into the Spanish Civil War. Little by little he stumbles into the life of Carax. His obsession blinds him to the dangers he is creating for himself and those he cares about. Central to the plot is the crumbling Aldaya mansion which looms with gothic intensity over the increasingly complex cast of characters who have connections with Carax.This is a marvelous drama inhabited by characters we come to care about. It has history, mystery, suspense, romance, friendship, and family. It has the extremes of love and hate, and a good deal of philosophy, all rolled into an arresting literary adventure you won't want to put down until you're reached the final page.
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LibraryThing member birdsam0610
I honestly don’t know where to start for this review- this book is brilliant, gripping, fantastic and addictive. I’ve heard it described as a book for booklovers, but I don’t think that this does The Shadow of the Wind justice. I loved it so much that I went out and bought The Angel’s Game
The Shadow of the Wind is translated from the Spanish and follows Daniel, a young motherless boy who is taken by his father to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books where he is to pick a book and treasure it forevermore. Daniel chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax, an author who he can find out very little about. Carax’s books are disappearing, being bought by someone who chooses to burn them all. Despite being offered a substantial amount of money, Daniel protects his book and because of it, makes new friends such as Clara and Fermin. The book follows Daniel as he grows up and tries to find out more about Carax, which leads to events with shadowy characters and a fantastical backstory that will have you endlessly repeating ‘just one more chapter’. Although the ending solves most of the characters’ problems, it’s not cheesy.
This book has some great Gothic elements and would appeal to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights fans (don’t worry, there are romances in this book too). The translation is fantastic and Fermin has a lot of truly funny one liners. The imagery of the buildings and the feeling of Spain in the post-war era is tangible- I feel like I’ve visited Daniel’s book.
The Shadow of the Wind would have to rank as one of the best books I’ve read this year.
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by the same author before I’d even finished this book!The Shadow of the Wind is translated from the Spanish and follows Daniel, a young motherless boy who is taken by his father to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books where he is to pick a book and treasure it forevermore. Daniel chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax, an author who he can find out very little about. Carax’s books are disappearing, being bought by someone who chooses to burn them all. Despite being offered a substantial amount of money, Daniel protects his book and because of it, makes new friends such as Clara and Fermin. The book follows Daniel as he grows up and tries to find out more about Carax, which leads to events with shadowy characters and a fantastical backstory that will have you endlessly repeating ‘just one more chapter’. Although the ending solves most of the characters’ problems, it’s not cheesy.
This book has some great Gothic elements and would appeal to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights fans (don’t worry, there are romances in this book too). The translation is fantastic and Fermin has a lot of truly funny one liners. The imagery of the buildings and the feeling of Spain in the post-war era is tangible- I feel like I’ve visited Daniel’s book.
The Shadow of the Wind would have to rank as one of the best books I’ve read this year.
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LibraryThing member DevourerOfBooks
“Shadow of the Wind” is a gothic, bookish thriller. When Daniel’s father takes him to the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, he discovers a book called “Shadow of the Wind” by Julian Carax and, with it, a mystery. There is someone hunting down and burning all of Carax’s books. Daniel has what
“Shadow of the Wind” was a really fantastic book. The plot was definitely complicated and twisting, but it worked. These are my favorite sorts of mysteries, rambling gothic plots, somewhat similar to “The Thirteenth Tale” in feel, though not in detail. One thing that “Shadow of the Wind” and “The Thirteenth Tale” do have in common, though, is the underlying love of books. This is a book-lover’s mystery, and this book lover loved it.
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is probably the last copy of “Shadow of the Wind” in existence. Even more perplexing, the man who seems to be burning the books calls himself Lain Coubert, which is the name of one of the characters in “Shadow of the Wind.” In “Shadow of the Wind,” Coubert is the name of the Devil. Who is Coubert, really? What happened to Carax? How does the sadistic Inspector Fumero fit into all of this?“Shadow of the Wind” was a really fantastic book. The plot was definitely complicated and twisting, but it worked. These are my favorite sorts of mysteries, rambling gothic plots, somewhat similar to “The Thirteenth Tale” in feel, though not in detail. One thing that “Shadow of the Wind” and “The Thirteenth Tale” do have in common, though, is the underlying love of books. This is a book-lover’s mystery, and this book lover loved it.
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LibraryThing member Aeyan
How have I been a bookseller for ten years and failed to understand the beauty of this book? Failed to have heard nothing of its literary quality and linguistic grace and gothic allure? Failed to glimmer anything but the superficial knowledge that it is considered to be a 'good book?'
'The Shadow
A blurb within the author description declares it to be the best selling Spanish novel since 'Don Quixote,' revealing that this novel encompasses one of those moments in culture to be savored: where the whims of the masses converge to celebrate and support a truly deserving subject. I will take it as my duty as a bookseller to place 'The Shadow of the Wind' into as many customer's hands as I maunder and ambulate about my own Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
'The Shadow
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of the Wind' is haunting and clever, tinged with tragedy past and scarred with tragedy present, threatening with the promise of tragedy future; emboldened by language striking the balance between poetic and rhapsodic yet forthright and clear, it navigates a mystery and a love story and the mystery of a love story, weaving the historical Barcelona amidst the specter and ravages of war - the physical war of guns and assasination and revolt, and the verbal war of politics and commercialism and societal class. It is a delight of characters and a study of human interaction; so many of these people came to be formed in my mind as if painted by the hand of one of the Great Masters, evocative and weighted beyond the words compiling them on the page. When nearing the end, the palpable sense of discovery was overwhelming and absolutely heart wrenching. This novel belongs to the pantheon of texts that engage the soul. A blurb within the author description declares it to be the best selling Spanish novel since 'Don Quixote,' revealing that this novel encompasses one of those moments in culture to be savored: where the whims of the masses converge to celebrate and support a truly deserving subject. I will take it as my duty as a bookseller to place 'The Shadow of the Wind' into as many customer's hands as I maunder and ambulate about my own Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
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LibraryThing member secretshelflife
The Shadow of the Wind is easily not only one of the best books I’ve read this year, but one of the best books I’ve read period. I won’t go as far as to say it’s the best book I’ve ever read – largely because I’m not terribly prone to superlatives – but suffice to say, it’s the
On the morning Daniel wakes to find he can no longer remember his deceased mother’s face, his father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There, Daniel encounters a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by the unknown author Julian Carax. Unbeknownst to ten-year-old Daniel as he closes the covers on the story after that first voracious reading, Julian Carax’s final novel becomes the catalyst that sets the rest of his life in motion.
This is a story about ghosts – Julian Carax and the people, alive and dead, who bear his secrets. It’s a story about coincidences, or fate, and the blurry line between them only clear in retrospection. It’s a story about the uncanny intricacies of human connection, how the past is intrinsically interwoven with the present so that forgotten friends can become new enemies. First and foremost, it’s a story about love. Love for a novel that, upon discovering that someone has been seeking out and destroying every copy of Carax’s works since his inexplicable death, sends Daniel on a relentless, lifelong quest to unmask the mysterious author. Love in every conceivable form – true love, false love masquerading as true, tragic love, familial love, and love that drives a person to extremities, filling them up until it’s all they have left and condemning them when it eventually runs out. It’s a story about the disillusionment of realizing that, powerful as it is, love is an inept defense against many of life’s darkest shadows, and that there is too often as much bad in good things as there is good. And yet it is not a bleak or hopeless tale, illustrating as it does the redemptive power of love to hold us together afterward.
The Shadow of the Wind is a perfect example of a whole becoming more than the some of its (impressive) parts. It’s part mystery, part historical fiction, part portrait of a city (Barcelona emerging from the wreckage of the World Wars hot on the heels of the Spanish Civil War), and part love story. Zafón’s writing is poetic without being longwinded, powerful without being overbearing. His characterization leaves little room for categorization – in the course of the novel, you find yourself pitying and empathizing with villains, questioning and reproaching protagonists. He imparts wisdom – disguised as fathers, sons, and old friends, the institutionalized and the demoralized – without being heavy-handed, and executes breathtaking (literally - I gasped audibly several times while reading) action scenes and plot twists without a shred of melodrama. Daniel’s investigation intertwines the lives and fates of himself and Carax to the point where it becomes hard to discern deft parallelism from outright confluence of identity. Dissected, The Shadow of the Wind is all these things. Savored and digested, it is more.
The Shadow of the Wind is a novel so multi-faceted that in the course of reading it I experienced three sentiments somewhat rare to me: Before I had even finished it the first time through, I wanted to start rereading it so as to fully absorb and appreciate its every nuance; somewhere around the halfway point it had already made in onto my shortlist of awe-inducing books; and, like Daniel for Julian Carax, I was bent on tracking down more of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s work. All three were dangerous conclusions to make before the denouement – which so often disappoints, even in the best of books – but I needn’t have wasted a moment’s worry. Closing The Shadow of the Wind and setting it down in my lap, I actually had to inhale deeply to catch my breath.
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kind of book we invented the written word to preserve, giving the author ample time to mull over plot intricacies and characters and turns of phrase, to write them and rewrite them until they hoist the narrative up into vivacious three-dimensional movement like a puppet from its strings.On the morning Daniel wakes to find he can no longer remember his deceased mother’s face, his father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There, Daniel encounters a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by the unknown author Julian Carax. Unbeknownst to ten-year-old Daniel as he closes the covers on the story after that first voracious reading, Julian Carax’s final novel becomes the catalyst that sets the rest of his life in motion.
This is a story about ghosts – Julian Carax and the people, alive and dead, who bear his secrets. It’s a story about coincidences, or fate, and the blurry line between them only clear in retrospection. It’s a story about the uncanny intricacies of human connection, how the past is intrinsically interwoven with the present so that forgotten friends can become new enemies. First and foremost, it’s a story about love. Love for a novel that, upon discovering that someone has been seeking out and destroying every copy of Carax’s works since his inexplicable death, sends Daniel on a relentless, lifelong quest to unmask the mysterious author. Love in every conceivable form – true love, false love masquerading as true, tragic love, familial love, and love that drives a person to extremities, filling them up until it’s all they have left and condemning them when it eventually runs out. It’s a story about the disillusionment of realizing that, powerful as it is, love is an inept defense against many of life’s darkest shadows, and that there is too often as much bad in good things as there is good. And yet it is not a bleak or hopeless tale, illustrating as it does the redemptive power of love to hold us together afterward.
The Shadow of the Wind is a perfect example of a whole becoming more than the some of its (impressive) parts. It’s part mystery, part historical fiction, part portrait of a city (Barcelona emerging from the wreckage of the World Wars hot on the heels of the Spanish Civil War), and part love story. Zafón’s writing is poetic without being longwinded, powerful without being overbearing. His characterization leaves little room for categorization – in the course of the novel, you find yourself pitying and empathizing with villains, questioning and reproaching protagonists. He imparts wisdom – disguised as fathers, sons, and old friends, the institutionalized and the demoralized – without being heavy-handed, and executes breathtaking (literally - I gasped audibly several times while reading) action scenes and plot twists without a shred of melodrama. Daniel’s investigation intertwines the lives and fates of himself and Carax to the point where it becomes hard to discern deft parallelism from outright confluence of identity. Dissected, The Shadow of the Wind is all these things. Savored and digested, it is more.
The Shadow of the Wind is a novel so multi-faceted that in the course of reading it I experienced three sentiments somewhat rare to me: Before I had even finished it the first time through, I wanted to start rereading it so as to fully absorb and appreciate its every nuance; somewhere around the halfway point it had already made in onto my shortlist of awe-inducing books; and, like Daniel for Julian Carax, I was bent on tracking down more of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s work. All three were dangerous conclusions to make before the denouement – which so often disappoints, even in the best of books – but I needn’t have wasted a moment’s worry. Closing The Shadow of the Wind and setting it down in my lap, I actually had to inhale deeply to catch my breath.
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Subjects
Awards
Barry Award (Winner — First Novel — 2005)
Indies Choice Book Award (Honor Book — Adult Fiction — 2005)
International Horror Guild Award (Nominee — First Novel — 2004)
Dilys Award (Nominee — 2005)
Borders Original Voices (2005)
Meilleur livre étranger (2004)
Prix des libraires du Québec (2005)
Hebban Thrillerprijs (2005)
Gumshoe Award (Nominee — 2005)
Around the world in 80 books (Spain)
Waterstones top 25 books of the last 25 years (No 6 — 2007)
Original language
Spanish