The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
This book was a lot like going to the theater. It’s beautiful and you marvel at the skill it takes to make, but it’s an experience you watch from a distance with a sense that you are missing something – everything.
I just don’t understand what this book was about, what it all means. I mean I can see some key elements but I cant connect them:
It’s the cemetery of forgotten books, so it’s about books – which is to say stories and maybe lost stories or secret ones?
The juxtaposition of war and violence with comedy – as represented by Fermin. And also human kindness – I’m thinking of Don Federico and how the community rallies around him.
There is the mirroring of Daniel’s and Julian’s stories – is that learning from past mistakes? And is that a metaphor for the war? But I cant help but feel that many of those connections were created in the first place by Julian’s interest in and observation of Daniel, the coincidence of it is undone.
And what to make of friendships – Julian’s group of friends and the way loyalty and betrayal (and just boyish pigheadedness) tore them apart, in comparison to Daniel’s eventual estrangement from Tomas, over Bea.
Was this Daniel learning from Julian’s mistake? But again the circumstances may not have come about without the search for Julian, and wouldn’t Daniel have done right by her anyway once her understood her situation?
And I really don’t know where the obsessive and sadistic Fumero fits in the greater meaning – except possibly as a metaphor for the cruelties of war itself.
Finally what is the connection between Daniel and his late mother? Memories of her are his driving force in the story but I don’t understand what that really means.
Okay I have listed all this like I am proving I did my homework – look teacher I did read the chapter! (would you believe there was a time I used to get into trouble for not doing my assigned reading homework?) This is the literariest of literary fiction and the philosophical meaning has flown right over my head. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy any of it.
The writing is beautiful there are these descriptions that are just like a caress to the soul, evocative and emotional. But the book does not overindulged fancy language over the other elements. There is incredible detail, you really do get drawn into the post-civil war Barcelona, you feel like you are out there on the streets of the city with Daniel. And I loved the cast of rich and quirky side characters (Fermin taking king spot, oh course).
But I found it slow and heavy to get through. The gothic, mystical elements start off strong and then just disappear from the story. And Daniel doesn’t solve the mystery himself, he gets a history lesson curtesy of a letter from a dead woman. And most annoyingly from my perspective everything (except the cemetery of forgotten books) has a perfectly mundane explanation – it was like the whole mystery was for nothing – that is probably yet another thing whose meaning bypassed me.
Although I must say the way the ending repeats the start but with a profoundly different meaning gave me goosebumps.
It was an effort to finish, and honestly not really to my taste – maybe it would have made better sense if I knew anything about the civil war. I can see why has made an impact on so many people (someone recommended it to me years ago) but I don’t think it is something I would recommend myself.
