Book Review: The Shadow of the Wind

This atmospheric book is set in dark days in Barcelona, primarily in the years during the Civil War (1936-1939) World War II (1939-1945) and the decade following. It begins with young Daniel Sempere, who on his eleventh birthday is taken by his widowed father to a very special place, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where the elderly caretaker, Isaac Montfort, unlocks complicated locks and opens a heavy door to admit the two into a labyrinth of hallways, spiraling staircases, and thousands of shelves full of books. Isaac tells young Daniel he may choose one book to take from the library, and it will be his life's responsibility to care for it and tell others about it, for this place is the place where books the world has forgotten are left to wait for the right reader to bring them back to life by reading them and talking about them.

Both Daniel's father, the owner of a secondhand bookshop, and Isaac are taken aback when they read the dusty spine of the book Daniel chooses: The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. They trade a glance and nod without speaking as he hugs the book to his chest and leaves. 

This book and the mystery surrounding its author takes Daniel on a dangerous journey into the past, where he learns that some secrets need to be buried and, in the words of Nuria Montfort, "there are worse prisons than words." While Daniel grows up and learns the truth about love and friendship, he digs more deeply into Carax's past, uncovering long-buried secrets about his family, his love and friendships, and his passions. Characters drift in and out of the narrative, offering Daniel clues and further mysteries. Sometimes, one of the characters he meets will launch into a narrative, drawing the focus for the story back into the dusty past with such clarity that there were times I forgot whose story I was following, and it was a very satisfying sort of forgetting.

This novel is beautiful and dark and sad. There are some flashes of bright humor, mostly due to the preposterous character Fermin Romero de Torres, a con man, a ladies' man, a smooth talker, and a man wanted by the notoriously cruel and diabolical Chief Inspector Javier Fumero, who stalks in and out of the story, variously hunting Daniel, his friends, and Carax himself. We find that Daniel's life has some interesting parallels to Carax's life, and that they are both haunted in similar ways. 

There are some moments that are sad, some gruesome, some hopeful, some despairing, some frightening. If you want a window into these desperate days in mid-twentieth century Barcelona, if you like a mystery, if you appreciate beautiful character development, if you are not afraid of some darkness, read this book. Also, note that Zafon has written a handful of other books, each of which features the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and there is some slight overlap of characters as well, which I always appreciate.

I will leave you with these lines from one of the last pages of the book: "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."
Let us pray that Bea is wrong in her prediction...and prove her wrong by continuing to read good books and read them well.