Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Shadow of the Wind

[venusunfolding]

Ya know, I really wanted to know more about the Cemetery of Lost Books too! He should do a spin off and right about it!

 

[Prairie_Girl]

Wow! I'm glad I finally read this! Yeah at times it was a bit...much. and I TOTALLY knew

Spoiler

the Julian and Penelope were brother and sister

WAY before they did. (I was proud of that). Still, I thought it was a cute story.

 

[MonkeyCatcher]

I finished reading The Shadow of the Wind about an hour ago, and it took me awhile to figure out how I truely felt about it. What I came up with is that I liked it - but in a The Da Vinci Code kind of way. The writing wasn't overly spectacular, I was never stricken by the beauty of Zafon's prose, and I didn't find the plot to be particularly mesmorizing. But I still enjoyed it for what it was - a compelling, entirely readable story.

My main problem with the book was the ending. It was just so predictable and cliche. Everything just tied up so nicely,

Spoiler

with the baddies dying, the goodies getting what they wanted, and with Daniel living out the life that Carax had always dreamed of with his 'Pelelope'.

It really was a shame that it ended the way it did, because is was shaping up to be a great book until about 3/4 of the way through, when it just fell kind of flat. All the revelations provided past that point were presented in such a dull way that they didn't shock me as much as they should have (well, the ones I didn't predict anway ). The two halves of the book seem like two different novels now that I think back on them. The whole tone changed in the second half, and there was none of that suspense that I so loved in the first.

I also disliked how unrealistic the characters actions were. Everything the characters did just seemed too exaggerated. Fumero was far too evil, Daniel far too inquisitive, Fermin far too much of a romantic, and Julian far too deranged. I just don't think that what had happened in their lives properly explained their extremes in personality and actions.

But, like I said, I still really enjoyed this book. I just don't see it as a masterpiece, nor would I list it as one of my favourite books. It was too flawed for that.

 

[Maizara]

Another love letter to literature that I've just read. The other one was The Thirteenth Tale. I agree with monkeycatcher. It wasn't particularly captivating but it was readable, enjoyable. The pace is quite relaxed. So might be a problem for those not so tolerant of that. As for me, this book was an in-between reading so I had no problem with it.

As for the characters, I don't mind them being unbelievable. That's fiction for me.

The Shadow of the Wind and The Thirteenth Tale are similar. Both are love letters to reading/literature, both involve the life of an author, both have bizarre characters... But Setterfield's book would definitely be my preferred read!

 

[The waveguide]

I gave up on it

I thought this book was terrible. The prose is dull and pedestrian, it never soars or swoops or makes you feel much of anything. You will never gasp and the beauty of the languge nor will it make you feel anything especially.

Well, I am very surprised on your review! I enjoyed this book so much! I was in Barcelona once, and I could vividly imagine the streets in the rain, the sea, the trams, the Montjuic mountain...

I found the characters to carry individual personalities. I found the "good guys" and the "bad guys" very nicely described. The blind Clara was a very human character - the one that you give her your sympathy for her blindness and for her beauty but you feel a pity for her behavior. At the end she is just a woman, a very selfish one.

A spooky story around a mysterious Devil managed to thrill me. Actually there are many spooky stories in the book, coming one after another, they build one plot.

The story is very realistic from one side, and very mysterious from the other. At the end the riddles are solved, revealing just our world as it is, with its sins and secrets, with crimes and pain.

I read it at one breath (though this breath lasted a couple of days...) but my friend read it overnight. This is a very enjoyable read, so I'd recommend!

 

[The waveguide]

The main character is TEN and yet falls in love, has fist fights, and is involved in all sorts of amazing and dangerous adventures. Really, it's just ridiculous that a ten year old would engage in thease sorts of things or would even want to. When most boys are 10 they just think girls are yukky and want to play with their action man toy. They certainly are not chasing girls and solving dangerous mysteries.

Well, if you did not do anything dangerous when you were 10, that's a shame! My parents would kill me if they new that we (the gang of 10-years old ) broke into the military base (through the hole in a surrounding wall) and started there our "investigations" until dogs started to chase us with people behind... We did it back through the hole and then got lost in a swamp around the base. My sister almost got sucked in that swamp. But we never got caught!

Another day (actually that was a week during our summer holidays) we chased a complete stranger around the whole city, believing him to be a KGB or a killer or a thief. Now many years later I am astonished how dangerous and stupid that was, but for us it was a mere fun. We changed trams and buses to follow him, and managed to keep his trace for one complete week until one day he took a taxi and disappeared...

I though that it was the same with every average 10-years-old citizen, so I took Daniel's behavior for granted... But it seems that may be people forgot what it is like, to be 10-years-old?

 

[sanyuja]

I am surprised to see mixed reviews of this book.

I picked up this book because someone on this forum recommended it and though I don't remember who it was, I thank them.

As someone said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, but I wouldn't call it one of my favorites. It is not a masterpiece or a book which I would want to re-read at a later point of time.

I like the plot and may be I am just stupid, but I couldn't predict the ending. I was really shocked by the twists in the story,

Spoiler

especially when the author reveals that Julian is not dead and he and Penelope are siblings.

. The book moved fast - I couldn't put it down. It's a bit too long, the magic could have been retained with a few pages lesser. I thought the characters of Clara and her music teacher were extraneous.

What I liked about this book is the way it stands out from the rest of the mystery books. Take Agatha Christie for example, the concentration is more on the plot and story and not on language or description. That is not the case with this book. I found so many good quotes in this book which probably would be present in an Oscar Wilde or Maugham book, like these:

Shortly after the Civil War, an outbreak of cholera had taken my mother away. We buried her in Montjuic on my fourth birthday. The only thing I can recall is that it rained all day and all night, and that when I asked my father whether heaven was crying, he couldn't bring himself to reply.

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept

'Presents are made for the pleasure of the one who gives them, not for the merits of those who receive them,'

And the last paragraph which I really liked

Soon afterwards, like figures made of mist, father and son disappear into the crowd of the Ramblas, their steps lost forever in the shadow of the wind.

As I said, it's a book which I read and forgot about but for as long as I read it, I enjoyed every moment of it.

 

[hellow212]

I LOVE this book. I think I started reading it back in July, on a plane to San Diego for a mission trip to Mexico. I didn't get very far, and after I returned home I tried to keep reading it, but after I was a good way into the book, it couldn't keep my interest. It took me about 2 1/2 months of off-and-on reading to get towards the end, and once it picked back up again I had it read in a day or two.

I finished it and don't think I guessed the ending, but I wasn't trying to. I loved the way Daniel's life started playing out exactly as Julian's had. I saw the similarities and started getting really freaked out for him, since he was just a teen, and it seemed that if his life kept following Julian's, he'd be dead.

I'd gladly recommend this book to anyone, even though some people said the ending was predictable.

After I finished Shadow of the Wind, I looked up Zafon's other books. I've been taking Spanish for 4 years in school and thought "I'll read El Principe de la Niebla. I know Spanish well enough to get through it."
I wasn't exactly right. I get caught up on the idiomatic expressions and little words that I don't know, and it takes too long to look them up. I've still got the book from the library, and I'm intending on reading it. I just have waaay too many other books from the library right now. I think I'm up to about 8 books checked out.

::afterthought::

As to El Principe... I'm about 10 pages into it :/

 

[sanyuja]

Oh, so you can read Spanish too? When you have time on hand, may be you can read "The Shadow.." in its original language and see how it is compared to its English version.

 

[hellow212]

I would like to read The Shadow of the Wind... eventually. I don't think I would be able to understand a lot of it. Even one word in a sentence that I don't know can make the meaning unintelligible, and sometimes it's not possible to get it from the context.

Final word? I want to read it in Spanish (and own it), but only when I have a LOT of time on my hands, and when I don't have a bunch of other books checked out.

 

[sanyuja]

I would like to read The Shadow of the Wind... eventually. I don't think I would be able to understand a lot of it. Even one word in a sentence that I don't know can make the meaning unintelligible, and sometimes it's not possible to get it from the context.

I agree. The beauty of a sentence lies not only on the literal meaning of the words but on its nuances also.

Final word? I want to read it in Spanish (and own it), but only when I have a LOT of time on my hands, and when I don't have a bunch of other books checked out.

And that rarely happens, doesn't it?

 

[hellow212]

And that rarely happens, doesn't it?

Exactly. I had a couple books on reserve at one library, and I checked a couple out at another library, and now all of a sudden I have 8 or 9 library books in my room

 

[jneni]

The Shadow of the Wind and The Thirteenth Tale are similar. Both are love letters to reading/literature, both involve the life of an author, both have bizarre characters... But Setterfield's book would definitely be my preferred read!

I've read Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale and Zafon's The Shadow of The Wind I agree with what you said, except I would think that it's easier to cruise through The Thirteenth Tale. Zafon's The Shadow of The Wind started off quite interestingly, sadly it falters half-way and ends in a way that I expected. Having said that, it's still enjoyable overall. The Thirteenth Tale is, however, really a page-turner! I finished the book within a day

 

[beer good]

Just finished The Shadow of the Wind and on a whole, I'm pretty happy with it being my first Holiday Read (TM) of the year. It's definitely a thriller, a pageturner as they say, with healthy doses of sex, violence and... OK, no rock'n'roll, but used books are kind of like rock'n'roll and there's a lot of those in it too. But it's a thriller written the way I wish more thrillers were; by a writer who might not be a genius but knows his craft, who can bring a setting and a character to life, make you smell the dusty old pages or the fresh blood, and keeps you turning the pages not by having a cliffhanger on every fifth page and killing someone else every time he runs out of plot, but simply by setting up a complex plot and then letting it unfold bit by bit. Oh, and I like the fact that he sets it in a fascist dictatorship just a few years after a very divisive civil war but doesn't make a huge deal of it, just lets it seep through without constantly spelling it out for the reader; it's become normal to the characters, after all. And while it's not exactly Pereira Declares, it touches upon the literature-as-resistance plot but turns it into something more personal than political. Plus, lots of gothic horror novel influences too, can't complain about that.

That's the good news. The bad news? Well, like others have said, it goes on a little too long for an ending that's a little too predictable. That comes with the territory, I guess. And while some of the characters are nicely drawn, others - in particular the women - seem like pawns, prizes or plot devices in the boys' game a little too often. (It feels a bit a propos that one of the major clues is sold for the price of a prostitute.) But hey, it's a machismo culture and of course that's part of the plot too, so I'll overlook that. What's worse is Zafón's tendency to switch narrator when it fits the story; he stays in first person for most of the book, but at times he cannot figure out a way to develop the backstory and just goes into omniscient third for a few pages until we're up to scratch. It yanks me out of the story, reminds me that it's just a story after all, and I'm not too fond of that.

Maybe that's a little unfair to Zafón; after all, with all the weird coincidences and generally blurred lines between the story itself and the stories within it, we might just have a slightly unreliable narrator here (we'd almost have to, or there would be some things that just don't add up). Maybe the book is (or tries to be) smarter than it looks; maybe I should have kept a cooler head than the weather permits, and not let the Barcelona fog trick me. But for now, it's a ; thoroughly enjoyable pageturner, no less, but probably no more.

 

[saliotthomas]

Just finished The Shadow of the Wind and on a whole, I'm pretty happy with it being my first Holiday Read (TM) of the year.

So now your ready for stieg Larsson Millenium.

Spot on as always BG.