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The Critic's Rave Reviews are all Correct May 25, 2004 (122 of 131 found this helpful)
The enthusiastic praise and adulation which critics have accorded the english publication of Carlo Ruiz Zafon's first novel, "The Shadow of the Wind", may trouble the reader who begins the book, worried that little might match his expectations. After all, reviewers who compare a writer's work to a combination of Umberto Eco, or Jorge Luis Borges, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or other literary giants, compel the reader to expect to be transported when they open the book.
Not to worry.
Once started, the single downside for the reader will be knowing that the experience must end. The plot is quite complex, the jacket cover's synopsis will give the reader all he needs to know. The important thing is to read it slowly and carefully.
A mystery story, a fairy tale, a love story (actually several love stories), a passion for literature, a treatise on politics, a bawdy tale, with love, hate, courage, intrigue, loss of innocence, humor, cowardice, villainy, cruelty, compassion, regret, murder, incest, redemption, and more. Add to this delicious mixture characters who come alive, and whose thoughts and feelings you will feel deeply.
What a great pleasure to discover; an extraordinary first work, one which towers over the endless and repetative volumes which inhabit today's "Best Seller" lists. Read it, and become hypnotized.
Edward Jawer
Wyncote, Pa.
ejawer@comcast.net
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How You See It Depends on What You Bring to It Mar 5, 2005 (78 of 85 found this helpful)
That it's so tempting to read SHADOW OF THE WIND is a tribute to clever marketing. Comparisons to Marquez, Borges, and Dickens mix with gushing tributes from Stephen King and references to best-sellerdom in Spain. The literary come-on is hard to resist.
In the end however, the way you respond to this book will depend on what expectations you bring to it. If you anticipate a reading experience worthy of those heady literary comparisons, you'll be sorely disappointed - Zafon is little closer to Garcia Marquez than Stephen King is. The closest he comes is having the temerity to give a minor character, a boyfriend of Beatriz Aguilar's, the family name Buendia, the prolific clan from ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. If you plan, however, on a fantastical romp through a mid-century Barcelona converted wholesale into a gothic swamp of ghosts, shadows, haunted houses, malevolent, revenge-seeking, jilted lovers, swooning virginal maidens, improbably picaresque characters, unbelievable coincidences, parallelisms, and twists of fate, and a host of pseudo-Freudian relationships, you'll love every minute.
The story line of SHADOW OF THE WIND is so complex and convoluted, it's nearly impossible to relate in less space than the book's own 487 pages. Suffice to say, the premise is drawn from the search of a teenaged boy named Daniel for the truth about the fate of Julian Carax, the author of a mystery story (also named "Shadow of the Wind") that Daniel has adopted and read after his bibliophilic father takes him on a "coming of age" excursion to the aptly metaphorical Cemetary of Forgotten Books. Carax has apparently written a number of other books, all of them commercial failures, yet someone has been traveling Europe to find and burn every extant copy of Carax's works.
With twists and turns that would make the Minotaur's head spin in his Labyrinth, Zafon spins multiple parallel tales of Platonic love, blind love (both literal and figurative), failed love, enduring love, filial love, forbidden love, and unrequited love. Through it all looms the mystery of Julian Carax. Is he alive or dead? Who is burning his books, and why? Who is the char-faced phantom? Why does the evil Fumero seek such hate-filled revenge? Will young Daniel ever find his true love?
Zafon's book could be easily parodied or brushed aside as little more than a Barbara Cartland romance, but his writing is better than that despite being too often over the top. From the opening page where Daniel describes his mother's death as "a deafening silence I had not learned to stifle with words," Zafon mixes searing images and thoughtful observations with engagingly quirky characters such as Fermin Romero de Torres who capture the reader's imagination and heart like 20th century Sancho Panzas and Dulcineas to Daniel's idealistically questing Quixote.
Unfortunately, these pluses are offset by unrelenting and heavy-handed atmospherics in which every page is marked by clouds, shadows, mists, flickering candles, twilights, smoke, rubble, ruins, twisted heaps, blood, and "glutinous darkness," and the like. Florid prose abounds: "The white marble was scored with black tears of dampness that looked like blood dripping out of the clefts left by the engraver's chisel. They lay side by side, like chained maledictions." Readers must also contend with two laughably miraculous conceptions, both occurring after first night trysts (a tribute perhaps to the ineffable virility of Spanish males?), and an unfortunately anachronistic request by a Barcelona doctor in 1954 for a "brain scan" of an injured Fermin (page 288).
Net net, SHADOW OF THE WINDS is entertaining escapism with modest literary pretensions. Enjoy it for what it is, but don't expect it to be more than it is.
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As good as a Caráx novel Jul 30, 2004 (38 of 40 found this helpful)
Zafón's storytelling skill is quite remarkable, his prose doesn't just take you into the story, it completely transports you. In only a few sentances. Zafón crafts a world of remarkable visions and events--just a little bit magical (as all the best stories really are) but grounded in characters who live, breathe, and merrily cavort off the page and into your heart.
But Zafón isn't just a strong storyteller with an exact sense of prose (and my compliments to the excellent translation!), Shadow of the Wind connects to people, it's almost a watershed. It's been a long time since I've been so excited about a book. I tell -everyone- to read it: best friends, my mom, relatives, people I work with--they're all hearing raves from me. And I don't do that lightly, but this book is joyous and sad, heartfelt and even wise.
But most important of all is that Shadow of the Wind is true. It's one of those rare books where you don't just hear 'their' story, it becomes your story as well. To loosely quote Caráx, "it holds up a mirror and a window to your soul," because it teaches us about who we are--about the communities that bind and define you.
And every single moment Fermín Romero de Torres was 'on screen' I had the biggest grins on my face, truly one of the great characters of literature.
I've not a single criticism or reservation about this book, and that puts Zafón on an extremely short list with Mark Twain, Frank Herbert and Orson Scott Card.
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A Good Read That Could Have Been A Great Novel May 5, 2004 (310 of 362 found this helpful)
Reading "The Shadow Of The Wind" was both a delight and a disappointment. This novel had the potential to be excellent literary fiction. At times Carlos Ruiz Zafon's writing reminded me of both Gabriel Garcia Marquez's and Jorge Luis Borges' work. My expectations rose dramatically as I began to hope for more than a good read. Instead of great literature, however, the novel became an overlong and predictable bestseller, with a most original premise, some brilliant passages and many flaws.
Sr. Ruiz Zafon's extraordinary idea of creating a Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a labyrinthian library where each book awaits someone to choose it and give it another chance to live by making it part of the new owner's life, gave me chills. There existed a possibility, as I read the first chapters, that I might be able to list this as one of my favorite works of fiction. Unfortunately, my disappointment when reaching the novel's conclusion overshadowed the book's many positive elements.
Daniel Sempere is a young boy who fears he has forgotten the image of his dead mother's face. His compassionate father, an antiquarian book dealer, introduces him to the book cemetery. Daniel and Sr. Sempere are both memorable and unusual characters, as are many of Ruiz Zafon's other figures. Fermin, a former Republican agent who becomes a second father to Daniel, and Julian Carax, the author of the book Daniel selects, are both extraordinary men. Daniel's choice of books ultimately determines the course of his life, as he tries to discover if the author is still alive and solve the multitude of mysteries surrounding him. The setting, post-WWII Barcelona, is fascinating and Zafon depicts a brooding city in mourning as a result of the atrocities of both civil and world wars. The rich plot and various subplots, filled with passion, obsession and revenge, have such potential but become terribly convoluted and lose coherence at times. There is much too much information given about some of the characters, their rationales, and oddly enough, about an ancient, haunted house. Much of the mysterious ambiance is lost as a result of all the unwieldy description. Here, the concept "less is more" would have strongly improved the narrative. The entire novel could have been cut by a third, perhaps, and made a better, tighter book without losing any of the story or character development. I am a big fan of long, juicy novels, but the length should have a purpose and enhance the tale. The author has focused more on the melodramatic rather than the literary elements. Some may not care, as this is an excellent read. I did care though, as I see so much more potential here and hope the author lives up to it next time.
I do recommend "The Shadow Of The Wind." Most will find it highly enjoyable, as did I. I just expected more.
JANA
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Gothic soap Sep 11, 2004 (54 of 63 found this helpful)
I've read the Spanish edition. I can tell you it's been a runaway success; most people I have talked to liked it. But I didn't. It's well written, and the characters are well described and likable, but, at the end of the day, it is a Gothic soap opera. Lots of unknown relations, ghoulish cops, disfigured good guys, mansions in the darkness during a hailstorm... 3/4 into the novel, you expect everybody to have been married and/or in love and/or be the second removed cousin of everybody else.
The first half of the novel is the best, it hints to a Gothic-soap spoof; but, in the second half, it fully falls into being a Gothic soap.
This novel owes a lot to "City of prodigies", by Eduardo Mendoza, which is far better.