The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1) in The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Dec 14, 2011 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it did not like it

Shelves: crime, literary-fiction, novels, fiction, historical-fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense, ultimate-reading-list, popular-fiction

In 1945 Barcelona, Daniel Sempere, a ten-year-old boy, is taken by his bookseller father to "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books," told never to tell anyone about it, and to choose a book off its shelves to which he'll always be the guardian. He chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He's entranced by the novel and tries to find other books by the author, but finds out few ever were printed and sold, and a mysterious figure calling himself after one of Carax's characters is burning every co In 1945 Barcelona, Daniel Sempere, a ten-year-old boy, is taken by his bookseller father to "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books," told never to tell anyone about it, and to choose a book off its shelves to which he'll always be the guardian. He chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He's entranced by the novel and tries to find other books by the author, but finds out few ever were printed and sold, and a mysterious figure calling himself after one of Carax's characters is burning every copy of the books he can find.

I loved the concept of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books when I first encountered it, and the opening chapter that bore it's name, but among the disappointments of the novel is I felt it went no where. Many people adore this book; a close friend whose tastes I trust, if not always mirror, told me she hated it, and that among those reasons is how Daniel betrays that secret. Well before that he betrayed his guardianship by at one point giving the book away to a woman he has a crush on. But what I couldn't forgive was how the whole concept was developed, or not developed. Who chooses the books? Why aren't you supposed to tell anyone? To whom and for what purpose is the secret revealed? But you know when I really wanted to throw this book across the room? When Daniel takes someone back to that "Cemetery" of Forgotten books, he tells her to choose one, just as his father told him to choose one. And what does she choose? Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles! In what alternate universe is that a forgotten book? In that one choice, Zafon transformed a magical mystical place into... a used bookstore.

A petty point, I know, but it's hardly the only hole or improbability in the book. I've seen reviewers defend those lapses as "magical realism." I see nothing magical or realistic in this convoluted tale. I haven't read Marquez or Borges, whom I've seen Zafon compared to, but I have read Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Joanne Harris, Toni Morrison, and Alice Hoffman, and when they insert magic into their narratives, you know it--it's not an excuse for a muddled or implausible plot.

I've also read the events are meant to be a tribute to the Gothic tradition. Stephen King calls the book "full of cheesy splendor." Well, I'm all for that kind of cheese. I found Matthew Lewis' The Monk and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White and Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale and even some novels of Stephen King great fun, but this novel fell flat to me.

I also wasn't wild about the style. Here's a typical sentence from a random page: The steely sun snatched copper reflections from the roofs and belfries of the Gothic quarter. It's the kind of prose some might see as poetic and lyrical, and others as florid and purple. I'm on the purple side of the fence, and I don't think you can blame the author's pile-on of adjectives on the translation. Or the chunks of narrative in italics--an effect by itself I find cheesy and annoying. Or the soft porn sex scene early on.

I'm afraid when it comes to this one, I'm in the decided minority of detractors--even if I at least I can console myself I'm in good company with my friend. ...more

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Feb 02, 2010 Lillie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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This is a fabulous book! There's a mystery within a mystery that just kept me coming back for more.

One of the best parts of the book is that it's set in the early 20th C in Spain, Barcelona to be precise. Starts off with a boy finding a book whose author is a mystery. And that begins his quest of finding what happened to the author and who/why were his books burned.

Loved the writing, the translation was beautiful. Only regret is that I don't speak or read Spanish. To have been able to read this ...more

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