The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Penguin, 2005)
Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind is promoted as a sort of literary thriller, along the lines of Umberto Eco’s Focault’s Pendulum or The Name of the Rose, and people also seem to compare it with Borges a lot. Those comparisons aren’t exactly wrong, but I think they sort of miss the point.
More than anything else, The Shadow of the Wind is about synchronicity. The young protagonist, Daniel Sempere, goes to the “Cemetary of Forgotten Books”, is entrusted with a novel by mysterious author Julián Carax, and soon, events in his own life start to echo those of the Carax’ life. The novel in the novel is also titled “The Shadow of the Wind“, which should give you some idea of the direction in which this is headed. A mysterious man has been burning all copies of Carax’ novels, and is after the one Daniel has, which might be the last. The mysterious man uses the name Laín Coubert, which is the name of the devil in one of Carax’ novels, and so on and so forth. There’s also a large helping of references to 18th century gothic horror, romance, and adventure novels, especially later in the book, which of course are exactly the genres Carax wrote in.
The large story arc is interesting enough, and it’s skillfully executed, although some of the “mysteries” are not too hard to figure out, and the main mysteries to be revealed are more the details of how things happened, instead of the larger revelations it seems Ruiz Zafón wants the reader to experience. In the end, however, this doesn’t matter too much, since a lot of the joy in the book is in the details, especially, perhaps, in the humorous ancillary characters, such as Fermín, the ex-revolutionary turned homeless drifter under the Franco regime who Daniel and his father take in and give a job in their bookstore. I found myself looking forward to any sequence where he would play a prominent role, since his hilarious anecdotes and outrageously brazen solutions to problems are the book’s high points.
The ending is not entirely unexpected, and perhaps a bit pat, but by then, you’ve been so thoroughly charmed by the characters (not to mention Barcelona, which is as much a character in the book as anyone else) that you don’t care too much. Highly recommended, especially if you don’t take it too seriously. It’s not as intellectual as Eco or Borges, but it’s at least as enjoyable, especially if you love books.