I’m so blinded by enthusiasm that I’d be curious to hear what other people think. Michael Kerrigan's Voices from the Trail: The Lewis and Clark Expedition is published by Saraband this autumn. This book SEEMED like it was going to be so good - a dark mystery set in post-war Barcelona, with tragic love and a place called The Cemetary of Forgotton Books... what's not to love? I did like the detail in writing, yet it wore me out..! ( Log Out /  The Shadow of the Wind is the first book in The Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Zafon pulls a million disparate elements together to make a layered, suspenseful, compelling whole. 17 years old? One Friday, after work, I took sanctuary in The Hotel Biron, those little tables in the dark, page. I glanced at my father. Mystery; that’s what it really is. "Bea says that 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.”. At the same time, I want to shout from the rooftops about how good this book is. But while I was vaguely curious to see how everything pieced together, I didn't like or care about any of the characters, and dialogue like "Sometimes I no longer know who you are," kept me at a distance. Please try again. I tried to write this post three times but it kept getting longer and longer – I kept babbling what basically amounted to OH MY GOD I LOVED THIS. I haven't read a complex, lengthy novel in years and I was lamenting the possibility of not being able to finish it before our trip since I usually read a few pages at night before falling asleep. The bookseller leaned toward me confidentially, and for a second I thought he betrayed a look of respect that had not been there a few moments earlier. Occasionally I read a quick, easy mystery like CJ Boxx or Carl Hiaasen to break up the monotony Since my wife and I are going to Barcelona for our honeymoon I decided to read this book as it came highly recommended. Instead, I’ll focus on the thing that compelled me most – the characters and how effectively Zafon drew me into their lives. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, See all details for The Shadow Of The Wind, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. 5,209 global ratings | 3,688 global reviews, Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2017, Stop what you're doing and read this book now, Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2017. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. I wasn’t so sure about the second one but I liked the third. "What do you say, laddie? "Don't look at me," said my father. I am looking forward to reading more of Zafon's novels. I’m a Zafon convert! They are the first words that come out of my mouth when someone asks me for a good book. I’m getting crotchety. I gave this read a little over 100 pages, and stopped to consult some reviews. No part of this website may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the website owner. Within 6 pages I had fallen madly in love with this, I think it was definitely the writing, something about it, I don’t think I can explain the feeling with this book. Meaning is not the author’s job. Exuberant, larger than life in their tragedies as in their joys and desires, they are irrepressible: no dictatorship can keep them down. The author's evocative descriptions bring the images alive in my mind and the story just absorbed me from the start. As you can tell I’m totally fangirling over this, I had to take a few hours break so I could like gather thoughts, a few hours later I’m still fangirling. Desde entonces no me llaman la atencion las novelas historicas, See all 48 questions about The Shadow of the Wind…, Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes, Maandboek Oktober 2020 - Een boek over een Boekhandelaar: De Schaduw van de Wind. The young Daniel chooses one boo – The Shadow of the Wind by a brilliant but forgotten author named Julian Carax. Tomás Aguilar was a classmate who devoted his free time and his talent to the invention of wonderfully ingenious contraptions of dubious practicality, like the aerostatic dart or the dynamo spinning top. There's no other book I'm quicker to recommend than this one. I have mentioned more than once that a successful narrative needs to be more than a sum of its parts. From page 1: "My father sighed, hiding behind the sad smile that followed him like a shadow all through his life." It is insipid, lame, and poorly written. There aren't any, because I don't want to advertise companies which I loathe. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. 2005 It did not disappoint! imaginative. You might not be aware of it, if you’re not familiar with Gothic fiction, but incest has been a Gothic trope since the earliest days of the Gothic mode. The more he finds out about his subject, the more he learns of lives affected (or more often afflicted) by their contact with the writer, burned by the artist's all-consuming egotism. I loved this book so much that I feel like my tears should speak for themselves and I don't even need to review it. I'm curently reading it for the second time, and I'm falling in love all over again. One Friday, after work, I took sanctuary in The Hotel Biron, those little tables in the dark, pages flickering with candles and drank a glass of wine in solitude, completely enthralled in the world of 1940's Barcelona. Barceló arched his eyebrows but gave it back with an icy smile. Zafon treats all of them with such warmth of detail that I felt as if I were people watching in a cafe – they each had histories and lives, I just wasn’t privvy to all of them. The story takes place in Barcelona, 1945, and here’s the short premise of the novel. Many of its secrets may be sinister, but we have a sense too of a realm of mystery the regime can't reach, a place in which a taxi ride can become a romantic quest. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. To see what your friends thought of this book. The writing is along Dan Brown lines, with flowery metaphors mixed until they become meaningless. Doesn't ring a bell. Feminism was brought up like once in a positive manner, in the same chapter and by the same character objectifying some movie actress excessively. "A cognac for my friend Sempere, from the good bottle, and a cinnamon milk shake for the young one-he's a growing boy. Here is why : riveting. sentimental. For a mystery novel, this isn’t detrimental. I usually read non-fiction such as history or biography. I’m a bit torn about Zafón’s novel. Carlos Ruiz Zafón was a Spanish novelist. Its buildings pockmarked by gunfire or abandoned by bankrupt dynasties, it is a place in material and metaphorical ruins. I just finished Shadow of the Wind by Ruiz Zafon. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2019. I tell you, we're a hopeless case.". I purposely left out a summary and full list of characters. Dark settings. Since I was laid up for a few days with a bad back I was able to finish it in record time (for me). Ah, and bring us some bits of ham, but spare us the delicacies you brought us earlier, eh? Issues of patriarchy, both literally (in terms of familial relationships) but also more generally. Finally, The Shadow of the Wind (Zafon’s – not Carax’s) is full of books – the love of books, the writing of books, the preservation, destruction, selling and buying of books. Literary ingenuity isn't something Zafón wants to indulge in for its own sake; neither are his efforts geared towards some wholesale deconstruction of "reality". The ancestral tribulations of Carax's adoptive Aldaya family are genuinely heartrending, for all their gothic extrava gance; the menace of Fumero transcends his unmistakable aura of grand guignol.

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