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. 

Book Review: Two Books by Julia Stuart

Sometimes I enjoy reading multiple books by an author back to back to immerse myself in his or her style. It makes me feel like an insider to recognize syntax patterns, common themes and tropes, commonalities when it comes to figurative language. This week, I read two books by Julia Stuart, a journalist who has--sadly for the book-loving world--only published three novels so far. (Oh wait! I just checked...four! Time for another online book purchase, honey!) I have read these novels (the three I knew about, that is) many times and enjoyed them for their wit, their phenomenal character development, and their celebration of the beautiful value of life in both its high and low moments. 

Review: The Matchmaker of Perigord

Guillaume Ladoucette has been a barber in his home village of Amour-sur-Belle in southwestern France for all of his life. Even as a toddler, he showed a genius for trimming, pulling his mother's scissors from her mending basket and snipping away at the living room curtains, fashioning the fabric into an exact replica of the elaborate limbs and branches of walnut tree in the front yard. He loves barbering, finding delight in the art of making the hair on his neighbors' heads perfectly suit their personalities and head shapes. 

His perfect contentment, though, is attacked on two fronts: First, his neighbor's chicken (known as the infernal Violetta) keeps sneaking into his house and leaving feathers, droppings, peck marks, tracks, and eggs in the most obscene places, such as his butter dish, his clean laundry, and the seat of his favorite chair. He is both repulsed and terrified of her uncanny ability to break into his carefully chicken-proofed home. Secondly, he has noticed that his customers have begun to frequent scissor-wielding hands that are not his, sporting hairstyles that offend his sense of dignity and rightness. That, and many of his other customers have grown completely bald. 

Faced with what will soon be an empty barbershop, Guillaume decides to close that business and open up a new one: He will be the village matchmaker, even though he has never told the woman he loves that he loves her, quietly continuing to read the letter she sent him 26 years before and carefully oiling the hunting knife she left in his possession--but unable to communicate his own feelings.

The book follows Guillaume's earnest but unsuccessful attempts to match up the wildly odd inhabitants of his village: a fastidious dentist, a soulful baker, an ambulant fishmonger, a greedy grocer, a beautiful midwife, a postman who can't hold his bladder, and many others. 

It is just pure fun, and I love love love reading it and chuckling about the antics of the characters. Also, Stuart mentions their food and drink often, detailing the dishes of the French countryside in a way that makes me start hunting up my passport and packing my bags while I think I'm still reading. If you enjoy humor, wit, good food and drink, and fantastic character development--along with a tale of steadfast true love, you will enjoy this book.

Review: The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise
In this novel, Balthazar Jones, Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London, is given the task of preparing the Tower to accept a menagerie of animals that have been given to the queen by various foreign governments. Apparently, the Tower was once the royal menagerie, but then the animals were moved to the London Zoo when it opened. But the zoo had become too crowded, and the queen thought animals at the Tower would draw more visitors there.
Balthazar is skeptical of this plan, especially when the agent informs him that the main reason he has been chosen to prepare for the animals' arrival is that he is the owner of the world's oldest tortoise, Mrs. Cook, who is 108 years old and is, according to the stories, the daughter of a tortoise captured by the famous Captain Cook himself. Balthazar recognizes that this is a doubtful qualification, but he is not one to shirk the command of his monarch.
Balthazar sighs, shrugs, and does what he is asked, but his heart is not in this job, and it hasn't been since the terrible day four years before when his beloved son, Milo, died. Balthazar and his wife, Hebe, have been living as strangers since that day, neither able to talk about it or grieve together, both still wrapped in their shock and the emptiness of loneliness. She goes to her job each day at the London Underground's Lost and Found counter, where she and her co-worker, Valerie Jennings, accept and safeguard lost items, hoping the owners will turn up asking for them. They also spend their time trying to hunt down the owners of the more important, interesting items. Balthazar goes about his job, keeping tiny glass bottles in his pockets, in which he collects rainwater, having learned to identify by smell each different type of rain.
The animals do come to the zoo, eventually. (That is, most of them do: The penguins get lost along the way and have an adventure of their own.) And many of the tower's Yeoman Warders and other residents develop attachments to various animals, delighting in watching them eat and sleep and interact. But while Balthazar grows attached to the animals in his care, he loses his connection to Hebe, for she cannot understand why he hasn't yet wept for Milo.
This book is just beautiful. Even though it is so, so sad to witness the devastation of Balthazar and Hebe's loss, there still beauty in the way they remember their son and the love they had--and still have--for each other. Along the way, the book is also jammed with other delights, with history about the tower and--more memorably--excellent characters, like the priest who designs and builds elaborate devices to rid the chapel of the devious rats that nibble the vestments (and who also has secretly written award-winning erotic novels under a pseudonym, even though he cannot find the courage to tell the woman he loves how he feels) and Valerie Jennings, who works with Hebe and loves to try on the costumes and hats left on the subway, quietly falling in love with the tattooed former sailor who brings far too many things to the lost and found counter.
Read this book if you like to smile around a lump in your throat, if you like English history and natural history, if you love reading about characters who are quirky and full of life, with stories to tell and hearts that yearn for love.

Book Review: The Bird King

Andalusia, 1491. A band of soldiers and a novice nun with Inquisitorial authority come to the court of the sultan to offer terms, for it is the Reconquista and Ferdinand and Isabella want a Spain that is wholly Catholic.
Fatima, the sultan's favorite concubine, soon realizes that if these soldiers--and especially this nun, Luz--fully understand the ability of Hassan, the sultan's mapmaker and her best friend, he will be caught and tortured as a sorcerer. For Hassan does not simply make maps; he can make perfectly accurate maps of places he's never been. And even more interesting, he can make maps of places that don't exist...and then, once he has drawn them, they do. (And if someone destroys the map, the place disappears.)
Of course, Luz finds out about Hassan, and it is partly Fatima's fault, for she trusts Luz, who seems so kind and curious at first. When Fatima learns the sultan has agreed to give up Hassan to guarantee the safety of everyone else, Fa runs to Hassan to warn him--just in time.
Hassan draws a trap door in his room and they flee through it (destroying the map showing the trap door as soon as they're through, of course). They do get away, but not without peril or help. A djinn or two, a queen with mysteries behind her eyes, a fisher-monk, a horse named Stupid--all help the friends in some way.
When they reach the sea, Hassan and Fatima realize they don't know where to go. They only wanted to get away, and now that they have, they are lost. So, Hassan draws a beautiful sea chart, showing an island called Qaf, home of the King of Birds, a mythical place they have told each other stories about for years, a game they have played to keep boredom at bay. But, if Hassan draws the map, the place exists. They hope.
Even thought they don't know how to sail, they steal a boat and set out. The way isn't easy, and their pursuit isn't over till the very last page, but Hassan and Fa do find their Qaf and the King of Birds (kind of, but not exactly as they expected) and a somewhat happy ending.

Book Review: The City of Brass

Streetwise Nahri has used her wits to survive on the streets of early eighteenth-century Cairo for all of her life, wanting nothing more than to save up enough money (which she gains mainly through fleecing rich people out of money she figures they don't really need) to move to Istanbul to study real medicine. She doesn't think too much about her inexplicable abilities--that she can fluently speak and understand any language after hearing it just once, that she can sense another's illness and, often, heal it by laying her hands on the spot and thinking intently--and she dismisses the warnings of her only real friend, a Jewish apothecary, that holding a zar--an exorcism--is just not a good idea.
Nahri does it anyway, and after singing songs in every language she can think of to coax the evil spirit out of the girl, she sings a song in a language she has known all her life--but has never heard anyone speak. As she finishes the song, something feels different, and she hears a very angry voice in her head.
But the voice goes silent, and she's so busy collecting her fees that she ignores her uneasy feelings, successfully squashing them until much later, when she leaves a tea house and takes a shortcut home through a sprawling cemetery on the outskirts of the city. There, the angry voice that spoke in her head takes form...out of smoke and ash. She has summoned a djinn with her song, and he is very, very angry about it.
They don't have much time to argue, though, because other spirits Nahri would have said were just fairy tales and ghost stories begin to arrive, and they seem intent only on killing Nahri and the djinn. An ifrit and a whole host of ghouls launch their attack, and Nahri's djinn sends her to find a carpet in a new-looking mausoleum. She does, not even thinking much about why because she's so frantically worried about evading the claws of the hungry. After finding the carpet and fighting off a few ghouls, she drags the carpet outside, where the djinn stands surrounded by very dead ghouls, and she passes out.
She wakes to realize they are miles from Cairo, for the djinn has magicked the carpet. She learns his name is Dara, and he is taking her to Daevabad, the capital city of the daevas, or djinn. Dara is full of mysteries and secrets (and is also, of course, incredibly handsome and arrogant and a marvelous fighter and pretty prejudiced against humans--which makes sense since he has spent the last 1,400 years enslaved to some very awful human beings). Nahri has secrets of her own, and perhaps the biggest one is a secret she has yet to uncover--her own past and origins. For Dara assumes she must have djinn blood of her own, even though she looks fully human, since she can heal herself and others and speak languages so easily. He believes she might be the only survivor of a race of daevas, the Nahid, that were his people's great healers and his own race's patrons, those he swore his life to serve and protect, but that seems impossible because the last two Nahid were brutally murdered about twenty years before.
So, they head to Daevabad, but there are problems brewing there as well, problems Dara knows nothing about, as he's been essentially "lost" as a slave to humans for 1,400 years. They plunge right into the midst of this trouble, causing ripples and currents that threaten to destroy the whole kingdom. Dara has to confront the demons of his past, coming to grips with the horrible things he once did at the demand of the Nahids, still not sure exactly how he was brought back from his slave state and whether he is even fully alive (he doesn't actually breathe or bleed). Nahri has to come to terms with who she is and who she wants to be, figuring out whether she fits in this world she never imagined existed. And the other daevas, including the royal family, are shaken/delighted/outraged by the return of Dara and the appearance of Nahri, as all of their plans are called into question.

This is a great book with a setting I haven't read much about, so I definitely enjoyed learning more about the mythology, culture, and traditions of this time and place. It's also the first book in a trilogy, so there are two more books to add to the world creation. I have read the second as well (and read this one a couple of times), but the third hasn't yet been published, so I am eager to complete the overall story arc once it comes out at the end of June.
The book alternates between Nahri's chapters and Ali's. Ali is the second son of the king of Daevabad. He is an idealist, a brilliant scholar and highly trained soldier, preparing to serve as the battle commander and chief protector of Muntadhir, his worldly older brother, when he is king. He is even more prejudiced than Dara, if that is possible, and he isn't prepared to like either of them. But he strikes up a close friendship with Nahri, and this friendship leads to all sorts of interesting consequences.
So far, it's a great series, and when I dug around on S.A. Chakraborty's website today, I learned that she's already working on something new that, according to the early review will be a mix of "Sinbad the Sailor and Ocean's 11." What's not to love there?

Book Review: Dune by Frank Herbert

I guess I had always classed Dune as a "boys' book" in my mind. I don't even know why. I wonder if I had heard something about the setting (desert planet and giant, voracious worms) and figured it wasn't for me. I was surprised a few years ago to hear my niece tell me she was reading it in her high school English class--and enjoying it. But I still wasn't ready then to start reading it myself. It wasn't till this time of quarantine--stuck at home with plenty of books (but all of which are books I've read at least once) (and a library closed for who knows how long) but looking for something new to read--that I read a review by a friend who works at a wonderful bookstore that I decided to give it a go. (By the way, that bookstore is Brilliant Books in Traverse City, MI, and it is a gem. For customer service, it gets a very high ten out of ten. Please, if you need to buy a book, contact them. They even ship for free.) Anyway, as I was saying. I ordered the book and waited eagerly for it to arrive. 

It did not disappoint, and I'm glad I followed my friend's recommendation. (Thanks, Jodie!) Here is my review:

After reading it, I can see why Dune has been compared to Lord of the Rings. It has a similar sense of scale in terms of universe creation. Herbert plunges the reader right into a universe where factions have arisen, plotted, and grappled for millennia. Multiple worlds, each rich in culture, myth, and ecosystem, feel fully real.

And in that brew, Paul Atreides, a young boy with emerging powers even he can't fully explain, feels bound to a purpose that terrifies him--a purpose that Herbert hints at but doesn't fully reveal for nearly half of the book. Paul's father, Duke Leto, has been promoted (?) by the emperor to reign over the desert planet of Arrakis, commonly known as Dune. Arrakis is a place where water is so precious, the natives--Fremen--wear stillsuits that capture and recycle ALL of their body's moisture (which is disgusting to imagine, so I tried not to). 

On this planet, spice is mined. Spice: a mind-altering drug, a means for interplanetary travel, and for prolonging life. It is the most precious commodity in their empire, I think, and the one who controls its mining and export controls a vast fortune. The problem: the desert world, already almost inhabitable because there is so little water, is also home to huge sand worms that have many-toothed mouths big enough to swallow a spice mining vessel (with hundreds of men on it) in one gulp. And also, the Fremen can be hostile.

Paul and his mother, Jessica, have heard intimations that Duke Leto is doomed to die, but there are wheels within wheels in this book and plots within plots within many, many more plots, and they cannot stop him from going. 

The inevitable betrayal and attack leave Duke Leto dead, Paul and Jessica alone in the desert, and Leto's other trusted retainers dead or captured or scattered. Paul and his mother end up joining the Fremen, where their Bene Gesserit training and abilities seem to fulfill ancient Fremen prophecies of a savior figure. While lots of other action unfolds, Paul grows, learns, and falls in love, but he is haunted by his premonitions of himself as leader of a coming bloodbath, determined not to bring this future to pass. 

I thought this book was remarkably rich in world-creation, as I mentioned earlier, full of mysticism, philosophy, and politics. I am eager to read more of this series and have found myself in the days since I finished it still rather immersed in Herbert's universe, even after setting the book down and picking up the next one.

It was interesting as well that Herbert was able to maintain suspense so well, even with his heavy use of third person omniscient point of view, with direct insight into the thoughts of most of the key characters, even the "bad guys." My only complaint--and it's a minor one--was the character of Paul himself. It irritated me sometimes that he chose to close himself off from everyone. Everything had to be done on his terms, in his time. Yes, he was brilliant and gifted, but why couldn't he ever unburden himself? Why not trust anyone with his doubts and fears? Even though he is definitely unlike--set above--the other characters, why can't he also see the commonalities they share?

Still, as I said, this is a minor complaint. The novel was very well written, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading this "boys' book." I look forward to reading the rest of the series. 

Book Review: Himself by Jess Kid

This novel starts with a murder.

An unnamed man pretty brutally murders a woman in the forest, then hides her body. When he goes back to finish off her baby, he searches everywhere, but the child is gone.

26 years later, Mahony strolls into a sleepy Irish village, ready to find some answers. He grew up in a Catholic orphanage and he's had a pretty rough life, but he's a tough guy, and he knows how to handle trouble. Also, he can see ghosts.

He has come because he received a photo from one of the nuns at the orphanage, a photo of himself as a baby in his young mother's arms. She is beaming and proud. On the back, there is a note: Mahony's actual name is Francis Sweeney, his mother was Orla Sweeney, and nobody in the town liked her.

Mahony wants to figure out why and also where she is, if she is still alive.

Some of the townspeople are shocked by him. (He looks like he doesn't wash his hair often, his bell bottom jeans are pretty tight in certain places, and he smiles too widely at the ladies...and there is something familiar about that smile and those eyes.) Some of them fall immediately in love. Some are ambivalent. And a few quietly loathe him.

The novel follows his quest for answers, in which he gets help from an aging stage actress, his hostess, a bartender, a recluse, and a whole lot of ghosts. And also some frogs. And a ghost-dog.

This book is just pure fun. It has a very Irish flavor, a good mystery with a surprising revelation at the end, fantastic character development, and a lot of out-loud laughs. And it also has a balance of poignancy--and darkness. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

Book Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams

I remember watching this movie as a child after my mom had finished reading the book. She loved it and did her best to encourage us to read it. I can't speak for my siblings, but even though I enjoyed the movie, I just wasn't very interested in the book. A bunch of rabbits hopping around, eating clover and occasionally having great adventures or fighting epic battles. Nah.
Since then, I have recommended it occasionally to a student who loves animals, and a few of them have read and enjoyed it, but it was only a few weeks ago, when I was reaching for suggestions for Jared, who had just finished--and greatly enjoyed--Life of Pi that I remembered this book. I described the premise and he seemed interested, so I ordered a copy.
Of course when it arrived, he took one look at the cover and shook his head. He had already decided in the time the book took to be shipped that he was more interested in reading Jurassic Park or The Lost World instead, so I decided to read it myself.
And I am so glad I did.
And here is my review: (Warning. I will cover a fair number of primary plot points.)

Hazel and Fiver, brothers, lead a group of about ten rabbits away from their home warren because Fiver--who has visions and intuitions that are usually prophetic--has foreseen doom for their home. They warn the chief rabbit, but he dismisses them and tries to arrest them.
The band of runaways has many adventures before establishing a new warren on Watership Down, the safe place Fiver foresaw.
The dig burrows, befriend a mouse and a gull, and then realize that without does, their warren will soon be empty.
The find some--and liberate them--from a nearby farm, but Kehaar, their gull friend, has also brought news of a huge warren some distance away. Hazel sends three rabbits to investigate, and they return days later with shocking news.
Efrafa, the huge warren, is overcrowded and could certainly part with some does, but it is controlled by General Woundwort, a megalomaniac dictator, who will not tolerate the removal of any rabbits--and the delegates themselves barely effect their escape.
Hazel, though, will not give up. The two does rescued from the farm are not enough. He leads a band of rabbits back to Efrafa, where with courage, luck, and cleverness, they do liberate about ten does and escape back to their warren.
But General Woundwort will not give up, and be brings a force to attack the warren on Watership Down. It is only with even MORE courage, luck, and cleverness that Hazel's band defeats Woundwort's. Hooray!

Okay, I've actually summarized the whole thing, so if you do decide to read it, maybe wait awhile and give yourself time to forget this summary. But you know, even if you have foreknowledge of the basic plot, you can still enjoy the book. Adams describes the English countryside (and every hill, river, farm, and copse he describes actually exists, or it did in 1972) with loving, attentive care. The land is lush with life, with rabbits (and all of the other creatures) going about their lives, hunting for food, looking for safety, struggling to survive. It is obvious that Adams did careful research about rabbit behavior. Even though they talk and have emotions, their actions (and even feelings) seem possible and even likely actions and emotions for rabbits to have. One of my favorite parts in the book was the parts where the rabbits spent time together telling stories, usually focusing on the antics of their hero, El-ahrairah, the wily rabbit king of old, who tricked even the shrewdest out of their lettuce (or other things).
It's a lovely book. I recommend it to anyone looking for a book dense with description, with some action and adventure, with interesting characters. I am going to push Jared harder to read it once he finishes his dinosaur kick.