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From Publishers Weekly
Ruiz Zafón's novel, a bestseller in his native Spain, takes the satanic touches from Angel Heart and stirs them into a bookish intrigue à la Foucault's Pendulum. The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax's novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax's novels. As he grows up, Daniel's fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a "porcelain gaze," Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend's sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide. Officially, Carax's dead body was dumped in an alley in 1936. But discrepancies in this story surface. Meanwhile, Daniel and Fermín are being harried by a sadistic policeman, Carax's childhood friend. As Daniel's quest continues, frightening parallels between his own life and Carax's begin to emerge. Ruiz Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors (snow is "God's dandruff"; servants obey orders with "the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects"). Yet the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Call it the "book book" genre: this international sensation (it has sold in more than 20 countries and been number one on the Spanish best-seller list), newly translated into English, has books and storytelling--and a single, physical book--at its heart. In post-World War II Barcelona, young Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a massive sanctuary where books are guarded from oblivion. Told to choose one book to protect, he selects The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax. He reads it, loves it, and soon learns it is both very valuable and very much in danger because someone is determinedly burning every copy of every book written by the obscure Carax. To call this book--Zafon's Shadow of the Wind-- old-fashioned is to mean it in the best way. It's big, chock-full of unusual characters, and strong in its sense of place. Daniel's initiation into the mysteries of adulthood is given the same weight as the mystery of the book-burner. And the setting--Spain under Franco--injects an air of sobriety into some plot elements that might otherwise seem soap operatic. Part detective story, part boy's adventure, part romance, fantasy, and gothic horror, the intricate plot is urged on by extravagant foreshadowing and nail-nibbling tension. This is rich, lavish storytelling, very much in the tradition of Ross King's Ex Libris (2001). Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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First Sentence
A SECRET'S WORTH DEPENDS ON THE PEOPLE FROM WHOM IT MUST be kept. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
A SECRET'S WORTH DEPENDS ON THE PEOPLE FROM WHOM IT MUST be kept. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
For dreamers and lovers,
By
This review is from: The Shadow of the Wind (Paperback)
I found this book entirely by acccident, in a shopping mall bookstore where I was killing time before catching a bus. I wandered all the way into the Z's, way over in the back corner behind a pile of boxes, and reached for the very last book on the very last shelf. I was hooked on page 2, standing right there in the bookstore, holding my breath and thinking: "Where the heck have you been all my life?"The plot has been described by other reviewers, but my main impression after reading "The Shadow of the Wind" was of emerging from a strange, beautiful, luminous dream, the kind of dream that leaves you blinking at the world and noticing poetry in the most trivial things around you. This is a book for dreamers and lovers, for people who can still remember being seventeen and deliriously in love, for those of you who smile at the full moon even when they're in a hurry. Lucia Graves' translation is nothing short of miraculous. I don't know enough Spanish to pass a technical judgment on it, but the result in English is a thing of true beauty. The storyline itself is a page-turner, but you'll want to pace yourself just to make it last longer. One last comment: I've heard this book compared to "The Name of the Rose" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Don't let it scare you. This one will take you by the heart and take you on a flight you'll never forget.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A different world.,
By
This review is from: The Shadow of the Wind (Paperback)
While the book is full of page-turning melodrama and intrigue, the real power of it lies in its ability to draw you into the world of Barcelona during that era. Having visited there in the past, the book was able to fully capture my imagination and take me away to enjoy the adventures of Daniel first hand.
5.0 out of 5 stars
mysterious,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Shadow of the Wind (Paperback)
Couldn't put it down. The twists in the plot and mysterious form of writing creates an intricate story that kept me guessing.
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