The Importance of an Unforgettable Book – The Shadow of the Wind

In some ways, belonging to a book club has exacerbated my distrust of any novel that makes its way onto the New York Times best seller list (maybe with the wonderful exception of stumbling on The Monster of Florence last year). When the club members recommend those books they have either seen reviewed in the latest NYT’s Sunday insert or those prominently displayed by the library check out desk in the seven-day loan case, I mentally quiver, dreading another couple of days of wasted time.

So there I was delving further into my being relived youth, reconstructing Edwin Drood’s disappearance last week when I decided laying a four pound, 800 page tome on my stomach while reading in bed was not the most comfortable thing to do. I reached into the massive pending bill on the “unread” and picked up a lighter paperback, The Shadow of the Wind, that Bill’s Emily sent me in my goodie box of birthday presents. I opened it, and surprise, out fluttered Emily’s notepaper with her glowing, insightful recommendation. I started reading, and like her and her mother, was hooked.

I was not familiar with the author, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. WIKI mentions him as a writer of children’s literature with this story being his first venture into a genre that is part Great Expectations, part murder mystery/crime thriller, and most of all, a paean to loving books. Several of the books I have blogged on have been layered with the writer’s writing about writing. Zafon writes about reading. What an instantaneous match for a book devourer.

Zafron relishes independent book stores, sellers who purchase estate libraries, and readers who cherish the first book that appealed to them with all the ardor and bliss of first love. Daniel, the protagonist, son of a bookseller, discovers his favorite book, The Shadow of the Wind, in the cemetery of forgotten books. Like me, he then feels compelled to read everything else written by its author Julian Carax, a writer who seems to be not only out of print but one whose novels are relentlessly being destroyed. Set in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and WWII, the reader first suspects there might be something politically dangerous in Carax’s stories, drawing the wrath of military censorship. Soon a mysterious dark and threatening person approaches Daniel to buy the book. He hides it back in the cemetery’s winding corridors.

Although most of the back story deals with Carax’s early life, friends, school, and family, and how his time and place factors in the stories he wrote, Daniel’s quest to discovery the author’s past exposes him to corrupt policemen, disowning families, and friendships deteriorating into hatreds. Daniel is joined in his pursuit by a colorful character, Fermin de Torres. Echoes of Cervantes, Dickens and Flaubert, as well as more contemporary Spanish-speaking writers pepper almost every page. Time and place is reemphasized as Zafon includes a map to make a walking tour of the places in Barcelona depicted in the book.

Emily, I too loved the book and it was like finding it on a shelf of unappreciated novels. I loved the cross generational parallels of the story, the importance placed on family and friends, despite their dysfunctionality and tensions (how uniquely un-American). I will stop at the library tonight to pick up Zafon’s second , The Angel’s Game, which is a prequel to TSOTW, and the second in what will be a four part series.