The Shadow of the Wind

I'll admit that I picked up Carlos Ruis Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind partly because it takes place in Barcelona and that's where we were heading for the first leg of our honeymoon. But I also read the sequel to it several years ago when my mother in law (I can finally say that!) read it for her book club and liked it.

Picking this book turned out to be a spectacular idea. I'd read about a third of it by the time we landed in Barcelona, so I was already able to pick out some of the major landmarks on the way to the hotel. As I became more acquainted with the city, the book, which relies heavily on Barcelona's geography, became more alive. I couldn't place many of the smaller streets where characters lived, but when someone was cutting across town, dashing through the Plaza de la Catalunya or passing a specific cathedral, I was able to mentally trace their journey, and that added a lot to my experience of the book.

The Shadow of the Wind is a mystery that ends up affecting people across generations. Young Daniel, the narrator discovers a book in the Cemetery of Books, where forgotten books go to not die. He falls in love with the story, but in the following years has trouble learning anything more about the author or finding his other books. What he does learn is that someone has been systematically seeking them out and destroying them, making his copy valuable beyond measure to any number of people.

I don't know if it was obvious or if I've just become accustomed to the shape of stories, but I solved the central mystery pretty quickly, at the first appearance of the mysterious book burner. But it was fun to see all the threads come together and to watch the younger generation repeat the mistakes of the previous generation. Hoping that they learn their lessons and correct those mistakes in time, before playing out the tragedies of their elders, provides a lot of the tension of the book.

This was a great book, really well written and poetic. It was probably made exponentially better by the setting in which I read it, but I'd still recommend it. I remember liking the sequel, though not this much. Perhaps it's time to revisit that book, and the other connected books in this not-quite series.