The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz ZafónMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hooter: A bookstore owner's boy tries to unravel the mystery behind a rare book he finds and even more mysterious author who wrote it.
This is a beautifully written book filled with melodrama we often associate with the classics - I totally see a Phantom of the opera-esque Broadway show on this plot line. A library of forgotten books where the boy stumbles onto a book whose author has an even more mysterious past. Each character has a storied past as the boy gets to know more whilst he deals with his adolescence and puberty. The book has a gripping format with the romance of the bygone Spanish era sprinkled all over - the aristocratic age. There is a bit of Oliver Twist, Phantom of the Opera, Count of Monte Cristo that you feel a sense of. But weighed down by it's own beauty , I feel the ending goes down a predictable path as the author tries to tie up all the loose ends without wanting to rush through.
The book tugs at a bibliophile . Here are a sprinkling of quotes :
“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."
“Books are mirrors - you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
"the art of reading is slowly dying, it's an intimate ritual, a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.”
Zafon even translated has shown mastery of prose and this book makes you love it just for being a bibliophile apart from being a historical fiction mystery drama.
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