DissolvedGirl

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Lucia Graves

“I have taken far too long a time to finish The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Let's put all my cards on the table: I don't really read genre fiction or mysteries. TSoTW is like a fantasy mystery. So, yes, it took a while before I actually started reading it. Too bad for me. From the first line ("I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the time" -p.5) to the last (Soon afterward, like figures made of steam, father and son disappear into the crowd of the Ramblas, their steps lost forever in the shadow of the wind - p.487), the novel basically dragged you into "bewitched" Barcelona, and held you captive, unable to look away from the grotesque story unfolding before you.

The story revolves around Daniel Sempere, a young boy who discovers that book at the tender age of ten. You know, that book: the one that makes you see the world in a whole new way, the one that you’ll hold every other books up to as a standard, the one that stays with you long after you’ve put it down. For Daniel, that book is The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. In his quest to find every book that Carax has ever written, he stumbles upon a decades-old plot, sinister enough to involve the devil himself, which would see every last copy of Carax’s incinerated. He is quickly pulled into a drama full of twists and turns, of clandestine meetings and dripping dark rooms, of love and betrayal and hatred.

Zafón’s writing simply oozes with heartbreak and longing. Reading it was like watching an intense Pasodoble full of passion and drama. This is the kind of book I wished I had saved for riding a train through the midnight countryside of Spain; helpfully, it includes a walking tour of all the places in the book, so when I do visit Barcelona, I feel, somehow, prepared for its tragically romantic façade.

Clocking in at just under five hundred pages, filled with dense writing, this is not a novel for the casual reader. It is, however, a novel that satisfies every appetite when finished. A high recommendation.”