Home » Book Reviews » Carlos Ruiz Zafon » The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Possible spoilers ahead
I am attracted to this book just from the blurb on the back mentioning the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and its description of ‘a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles’, which sounds such an idyllic place and somewhere I’m sure I’d want to spend time, and which I imagine will end up as one of my happy places that I picture in my mind when I want to fall asleep! But it sounds like things get mysterious regarding a book that a boy chooses from there, very intriguing!
The story is set in Barcelona six years after the Spanish Civil War. Daniel Sempere is taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books by his father and chooses a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He becomes obsessed to find out more about the author who seems to have had a tragic and unhappy life, and Daniel also begins to believe that solving the mystery of Carax’s life will in some way bring back the memory of his dead mother. Daniel’s life then seems to be mirroring Carax’s life with them both becoming friendly with rich families and both becoming secretly involved with the daughter of these families, and Carax’s enemies then becoming Daniel’s enemies. There are also people trying to stop Daniel, namely Lain Coubert who has a horrifically scarred face and is trying to destroy all of Carax’s books, and Inspector Fumero. There are also people helping him, namely Fermin Romero de Torres (who had been imprisoned and tortured by Inspector Fumero and is still fearful of him).
Wow, I couldn’t put this book down, so much so that I rushed through it and all my notes and thoughts are in a jumble at the end! I will have to read the book again and savour it, and I’m sure then that even more thoughts will occur to me. I completely loved this book though, it reminded me of a Charles Dickens’ book with the beautiful descriptions and also the way that everyone turns out to be connected (such as Fumero and Carax and Moliner and Aldaya all at school together and their lives and paths and destinies and tragedies intertwined, and then all part of Daniel’s life), and it also reminded me of a Wilkie Collins’ gothic novel. It really does read like a book from their time with the care that Zafon spent in describing the characters and the scenes so I could picture it all so clearly in my mind. It really feels like one of those special treasures of a book, I am just blown away by the beauty of the writing and the skill that Zafon has as a storyteller and his clear love and appreciation of literature.
As well as all the detailed descriptions, there is also the suspense and tension, and the mysteries and the surprises, wow, where do I begin with these! Well, the mysteries and surprises examples first, I think (as I have a whole long list of the suspense and tension examples, tee hee!). There was the huge surprise that lovers Penelope and Carax were actually brother and sister (omg!!!). And the surprise that the visit to the hat shop was all engineered by Aldaya to become involved with his son. And there was the mystery over the identity of the scarred man Coubert and the surprise that it was actually Carax and that he had killed Aldaya and had assumed Moliner’s identity (at Moliner’s urging) and he was burning his own books, until he met Daniel and felt an affinity with him.
So the suspense and tension examples…there were so many and I doubt my heartbeat has yet returned to normal! The scenes at the Aldaya mansion when Bea had run away there after discovering she was pregnant have to be the ultimate in suspense and tension with the dark house and shadows and the uncertainty over who would live and die! There was also her meeting Carax there and him realising that this meant that Daniel would come there too and inadvertently bring Fumero. And Daniel going down into the crypt and finding the two graves and then someone else being there (that was beyond tense!). But I think one of the ultimate bits of suspense and tension were Daniel’s words from earlier of ‘In seven days’ time, I would be dead’, omg, what a suspenseful line to read! There was also the drama of Daniel being shot but surviving, and of Carax killing Fumero by throwing him onto the sunken statue in the fountain! As I say, I think it will be a while until my heartbeat returns to normal!
Then apart from the suspense and tension and the mysteries and the surprises, there’s the intricate plotting which is so admirable in this book. Moliner’s and Fumero’s roles in the story spring to mind as good examples of these. Moliner was a much bigger and more crucial character than was first hinted at, as he saved Carax’s life as a boy when Fumero tried to shoot him, he plotted to help Carax and Penelope escape, he also paid to have Carax’s books published, and he was also the connection with Nuria (though this was complicated in itself as Moliner loved Nuria but she loved Carax!), and he then sacrificed himself to save Carax’s life by taking Carax’s identity and being killed as him (even though this didn’t fool Fumero), phew, that took quite some unpicking at the end and would be good to read again now I know how crucial Moliner was as I’m sure there were earlier clues to this that I missed. And then Fumero (and I can barely type that name without shuddering!) had intricate links throughout the whole story, but he was driven by frustration and bitterness and jealousy whereas Moliner was driven by love and loyalty, and in fact most of the tragedies which were revealed were due to Fumero’s actions as he hated Carax and wanted him dead and therefore convinced Aldaya to want Carax dead too, and even Clara’s father died at Fumero’s hands, as well as how Fumero hurt Fermin, oooh, I found it tough to read any of the passages that Fumero was in as the page just bristled with his sinisterness and the power and control he had and what he represented (such wonderful writing!), Fumero almost haunts me now with how intimidating and scary he was, he just seemed to dominate the book really with him being connected to the past and Carax, and the present and Daniel. The whole story is deliciously complicated and involved, and I kept flicking back to re-read bits and tie the puzzle together, particularly Father Ramos’ story of the boys at school and Moliner’s part in that, and Nuria’s telling of events which proved in the end to be false/incomplete, and Penelope’s letter to Carax that he never received, just wow wow wow, this is such an incredible book!
I had to keep breaking off while reading the book too, in order to look up the places mentioned, such as Montjuic Cemetery, which sounds an incredibly interesting (if somewhat macabre!) place with winding rows and rows and rows of tombs (over a million, I think), often with photos of the occupants too. And Las Ramblas, which I imagine probably won’t be as atmospheric now as it was then, particularly as I see it in my mind in old-fashioned sepia kind of colours, tee hee, I’m very tempted to go there and mooch along any narrow little alleys I find, hoping to stumble across the Sempere’s bookshop and the Cemetery of Forgotten Books but I’m a little wary of being disappointed and just finding it full of McDonalds and Burger Kings! And I was fascinated with Barcelona too, as Zafon describes the city using such beautiful descriptive words with its history and buildings and architecture, and it seemed as much of a character in the book as Daniel and Carax were and that Zafon spent as much time and care describing the city’s character as he did describing the human characters, and I wonder if the streets and buildings he mentions are still there now, I’d love to make a pilgrimage of all those places, if so, and see if I feel the passion for the place that Zafon clearly did, ‘This city is a sorceress…it gets under your skin and steals your soul without you knowing it’. I also had to look up the Spanish Civil War too, as it’s not something I know much about and I guess part of me hoped that it wasn’t as vindictively violent as the book depicted, with the fear and suspicion that people lived with, not being able to fully trust their neighbours (or even family members) and not knowing which side people were on, I cannot imagine living through that, it all just seems terrifying to me and really disturbed me to read about, and of course is so different from the Spain I know now. And obviously one of the most memorable and tantalising aspects of the book (and which I most fervently wished was a real place!) was the Cemetery of Forgotten Books which seems like a version of heaven to me! I doubt it will ever leave my mind, it will always be something I think of wistfully and wishfully! And I thought it was a nice touch that Fermin became the keeper of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
I did wonder who gave Penelope’s son the name of David though that appeared on their graves, as wasn’t Penelope dead when the door was opened so why would her disapproving parents bother to name the child they were so disgusted at? Or did Carax name him (although that would mean he then buried them both, which would have been very traumatic for him)?
I also wished we could have had a detailed telling of Carax’s Shadow of the Wind book as it is described so tantalisingly, ‘The story of a man in search of his real father…a ghostly odyssey in which the protagonist struggled to recover his lost youth…the shadow of a cursed love slowly surfaced to haunt him until his dying breath’, I can obviously see that there are aspects of that in both Carax’s and Daniel’s lives but to have read the original, or just have excerpts from it, would have been interesting as it clearly inspired Daniel when he read it.
I think the overall treasure I will take from this wonderful book though (apart from the image in my mind of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books!) is Zafon’s beautifully descriptive style of writing and his passion for Barcelona and for literature, and I feel a bit lost now that I have finished this book! I am just in awe of this man’s storytelling ability and definitely intend to read everything he has written! There are so many lines in this book which I want to keep in mind and I couldn’t help jotting a few down to savour them, such as regarding literature, ‘A story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise’, that feels so powerful and really inspires me to want to write, and ‘The art of reading…it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind’, which beautifully describes the wonderful absorption of reading! And regarding fatherhood, ‘A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child…someone whom a child will not only love because he’s his father but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble’, that just brings a lump to my throat! And lines that made me consider deeply, ‘think about the war and about the fact that those who waged it had also been children once’, wow, that is really quite powerful, and ‘The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and soon they burn his soul’, that is very sobering and such a reminder of the responsibility of how we talk to people, whether they be child or adult.
I’ve been lent The Book Club Bible published by Michael O’Mara Books Limited (though I will have to buy my own copy as I love the contents) and they reviewed this book and asked ‘What is the shadow of the wind?’ which prompted me to think quite a bit about that question, and I wonder if the wind signifies Carax’s life and the shadow signifies the consequences of that life (which affected Moliner and Penelope and Daniel, etc), or even that the wind signifies the Spanish Civil War and the shadow signifies the consequences still being lived by the citizens even though it had been over for six years, so is perhaps a reminder that there are consequences/shadows to all our actions, though both good and bad actions and good and bad consequences I guess, like ripples in a pool of water, and also that we may not be aware of those consequences? The Book Club Bible also suggested companion books to The Shadow of the Wind being The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, and Oracle Night by Paul Auster so I’m tempted to read those. There are also reading notes at the back of my copy of The Shadow of the Wind (my copy was published by Phoenix) and they ask the same question about what ‘the shadow of the wind’ means, as well as also asking the reader to consider how important the setting of just after the Civil War was in the book and why Zafon might have chosen this time to set his story in, as well as how Zafon maintains the atmosphere of suspense in the novel. They have also suggested suitable other books to read as being The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Possession by AS Byatt, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Carpenter’s Pencil by Manuel Rivas (as well as also The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco which The Book Club Bible also recommended), so I have plenty to tempt me there for my next read! And of course, I must read the next book in Zafon’s series, which I see is The Angel’s Game. I notice he has also written some books for young adults too so I will try those, and The Prince of Mist sounds particularly good. But first I think I’ll re-read The Shadow of the Wind, particularly Daniel’s visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books!
