On recommendation, I picked up this sepia book with a faceless man lurking near a lamppost, entitled The Shadow of the Wind and expected something eerie and ghostlike – and got it. I also got a beautifully written novel that cleverly involved the narrator, a young boy called Daniel.
The book is about secrets of Barcelona’s past that intertwine with the present. A mystery about a book, ‘The Shadow of the Wind,’ and its characters is awoken after a visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and begins to impact on Daniel’s life.
True to its title, there is a lot of bleak imagery and vivid descriptions of darkness and light to convey people and experiences, ‘her hands wrote a curse on my skin that was to haunt me for years,’ and a stranger was ‘cocooned in his hollow laughter’ and her ‘voice pure crystal…so fragile.’
The author, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, was born in Spain and I can only explain his descriptions as intensely beautiful. He tends to personify elements of the weather or nature with ‘trees hugging the shadows’ and ‘windows…weeping with rain’ and simple but vivid ‘clouds bruised the sky.’
With my tendency to over describe, I loved the depth to Zafon’s writing and would liken his brilliance to Marcus Zuzak. The way he plays with mystery, murder and the magic of love, builds subplots on subplots. It is simply thrilling.
It took me a while to get to it on my bedside book pile and I would have liked to read it with more continuity. Despite the drawn out read it was as brilliant as my friend Ms Nil said.
Imagine if you uncovered dark secrets that were starting to replicate in your life. I’ll leave you with main character Julian’s words, ‘books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside of you.'
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