Shadow of the Wind by Zafon

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fun, like Dumas is fun. Pure story.

This is a book about books -- love of and obsession with books. Echoes of The Club Dumas by Perez-Reverte, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, Le Mystere Henri Pick by Foenkinos.

p. 483
"As I write these words on the counter of my bookshop, my son, Julian, who will be ten tomorrow, watches me with a smile and looks with curiosity at the pile of sheets that grows and grows, convinced, perhaps, that his father has also caught the illness of books and words."

p. 484
"Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offrs us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read , we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readrs are becoming more scarce by the day."

The author conjures up new characters (often caricatures) one after the other at a dizzying rate, each with bizarre and intriguing backstories, that intersect in unexpected ways. Then those stories are revealed to be riddled with lies and the lies with other lies.

Even in translation, the turns of phrase are delightful.
p. 165 "I suddenly thought that, despite herself, Nuria Monfort exuded a certain air of the femme fatale, like those women in the movies who dazzled Fermin when they materialized out of the mist of a Berlin station, enveloped in halos of improbable light, the sort of beautiful women whose own appearance bored them."

Enjoy.




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