The Possessed: The Angel’s Game

The Angel’s Game is the second in a four part series of books by Carlos Ruiz Zafon set in Barcelona and having as the theme, the importance and lives of books. The Shadow of the Wind is the first in the series but this volume predates its events, although it does introduce Senor Sempere’s bookstore and the Cemetery of Lost Books.

Here the main character is David Martin. When the story begins, he is a lowly , orphaned copy boy for a second-rate newspaper, where he gets the chance to fill in the back page with lurid crime fiction. Thus is born a successful writing career and the jealousy of his fellow workers. David is fired and begins to compose similar hack stories for a couple of sleazy publishers. His talents are nonetheless appreciated by one Andreas Corelli who makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

It was last week when I had just started reading TAG right after I was talking to a co-worker about losing and reclaiming one’s faith and the incomprehensibility of celebrity Scientologists, when off-handily joked that either of us should have established our own religion. The conversation/jesting ended and I returned to the book, only to have a serendipitous start to see that was the nature of the book Corelli wanted Martin to write – one that explored the human needs for religion and would proffer a new variation on the theme. Like Robert Johnson at his crossroads (and anticipating a rereading of Reservation Blues for book club next month) menacing Corelli, despite his angel lapel pin, is demonic.

Thus spake Corelli: “Are you not tempted to create a story for which men and women would live and die, for which they would be capable of killing and allowing themselves to be killed, or sacrificing and condemning themselves, of handling over their souls? What greater challenge for your career than to create a story so powerful that it transcends fiction and becomes revealed truth?”

And continuing his bargain: “What I want from you is the form, not the content. The content is always the same and has been in place since human life began. It’s engraved in your heart with a serial number. What I want you to do is find an intelligent and seductive way of answering the questions we ask ourselves, and you should do so using your own reading of the human soul, putting into practice your art and your profession. I want you to bring me a narrative that awakens the soul.

The book is much more occult than TSOTW and the dangers are otherworldly making the pace page-turning. But below the dangers, intrigue and threatening characters, Zafon is himself allured into writing an unforgettable book, one that teaches universal moral/religious principles be observing the actions and thoughts of men. In addition to Martin’s doubts and despairs, Zafon postures the research librarian Eulalia and the elder Sempere as two counterpoints to institutionalized dogma, believing in the life and nobility of ideas as housed in books.

Corelli, publisher of a firm named Lux Aeterna, like all memorable devils is most like the fallen archangel Lucifer from Paradise Lost. But his insights about “true religion” are not Miltonian. Rather than read like commentary on jihadists: “The first step for believing passionately is fear. Fear of losing our identity, our life, our status, or our beliefs. Fear is the gunpowder and hatred is the fuse. Dogma, the final ingredient is only a lighted match.”

Given the overload of witches, ghosts, haunted houses and gloomy, polluted Barcelona in the early 20^th Century, it seems inevitable that Zafon’s novel, like Dan Brown, will be adapted to the screen. It will be interesting to see how the demons of Hollywood and Vine adapt a story that is not anti-Christian and one that advances the life redeeming virtues of the written word.