BOOK REPORT: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Title:                    The Shadow of the Wind 

Author:                Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Original Copyright Date:        2001

Translation to english:          Lucia Graves 2004

My Rating:    4 out of 5 stars  (highly enjoyable)

Would Recommend to a friend?: Yes

Back Cover Description: 

"Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'Cemetery of Forgotten Books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles. To this library, a man brings his ten-year-old son, Daniel, one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book and from the dusty shelves he pulls The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. But as Daniel grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind."

My Thoughts:

Maggie read this book a few years ago after receiving it as a present from my sister Tina.  While she was reading it, she couldn't put it down and she instantly recommend that I read it next.  I admit that it took me a while to get around to it, but once I did, I was hooked.

The book is very well written, with a twisting/turning plot full of intrigue, suspense, murder, and love with a few "DON"T GO IN THERE GIRL!" moments for good measure.  It reminded me of a more literary version of a Dan Brown novel.  The characters were complex and interesting; Barcelona provides a mysterious and rich backdrop for the story. 

At the core of the The Shadow of the Wind is a book, called, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax.  As I read the novel, one of the major recurring themes I noticed was about the power and importance of books and storytelling.  The books themselves are revered by the main characters, especially the ones which are rare or forgotten.  

Television is severely panned only once and rarely mentioned again.  This was the dawning of the age of the television, but the characters in the novel had no use for it.  In my own life, television has fallen far down on my priority list, mainly because I want to spend more time with Sims.  I find I don't miss it that much.  I think the following quote from the book, given the current state of television, (Jersey Shore anyone?) is quite fitting:

"Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own. Humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say -- it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that"   -- Fermin Romera de Torres, upon the television set becoming more common in Barcelona in 1954. 

Contrast that statement with this:

"Bea says the art of reading is slowly dying, that 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, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day."

Now that I think about it, maybe it was this book which subconsciously inspired me to start the Olio-Scholar Project in the first place.