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May. 14th, 2004 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mojosmom#50
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves
The first sentence hooked me: "I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time."
And a very Bookcross-y paragraph describing that place:
"This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens . . . When a library disappears, or a book-shop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody's best friend. Now they have only us . . ."
We are in Barcelona, 1945, and 10-year-old Daniel Sampere has just chosen a book to protect, one that will have special meaning for him. It is The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax, and once Daniel reads it, he will begin a search for Carax's other work. But he will discover that someone else is also engaged in that search, and is systematically destroying every copy of Carax's books that can be found.
As the years pass, Daniel's life begins to parallel Carax's and intertwine with it, as he unravels a mystery that reaches back to the days before and during the Spanish Civil War, and finds love, friendship and betrayal.
A tightly-woven and intricate plot, realistic and psychologically complex characters, beautiful language, romance, passion, and mystery all add up to a book that is difficult to put down.
Here's hoping that more of Zafón's work gets translated into English.
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves
The first sentence hooked me: "I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time."
And a very Bookcross-y paragraph describing that place:
"This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens . . . When a library disappears, or a book-shop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody's best friend. Now they have only us . . ."
We are in Barcelona, 1945, and 10-year-old Daniel Sampere has just chosen a book to protect, one that will have special meaning for him. It is The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax, and once Daniel reads it, he will begin a search for Carax's other work. But he will discover that someone else is also engaged in that search, and is systematically destroying every copy of Carax's books that can be found.
As the years pass, Daniel's life begins to parallel Carax's and intertwine with it, as he unravels a mystery that reaches back to the days before and during the Spanish Civil War, and finds love, friendship and betrayal.
A tightly-woven and intricate plot, realistic and psychologically complex characters, beautiful language, romance, passion, and mystery all add up to a book that is difficult to put down.
Here's hoping that more of Zafón's work gets translated into English.
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Date: 2004-05-15 10:18 am (UTC)