Book Review - The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For this month's book club, I chose The Shadow of the Wind strictly because Stephen King wrote an enthusiastic cover review. In his comments, he called The Shadow of the Wind ‘one gorgeous read.’ He was right. Many layered stories within stories in post war Barcelona, Spain are all connected mysteriously and in the hands of a young boy. The novel opens with Daniel, a ten year old boy selecting a book from the fantastically named ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’ with the promise to his father that he would never tell anyone about that most sacred place. The book that he chose, The Shadow of the Wind, is the beginning of the search for the lost author ~ who not only wished to remain lost, but wanted to destroy all copies of his books. The search takes us into the stories within the story with humour, darkness, great love and great hate. Time often stood still, and then raced forward to the next harrowing event while memories of the past loomed forever present.

This was a second read for me, and I enjoyed it as much as I did on the first read. My favourite character, because of his constant verbal ballet in any sort of a situation, was Fermin. This character provided much of the comic relief throughout these dark, and realistic stories. Daniel, the protagonist, was really a fairly quiet, and quite naive man, who grew from age ten to a young father by the end of the book with his own ten year old son. This book is full of the shadows of the lives of the city and the many men and women that people this rich and tantalizing story.

“I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent

 of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped 

to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye.”

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

Title: The Shadow of the wind

Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Originally Published in Spanish as la Sombre del Viento (2001)

Translation Copyright: Lucia Graves, 2004

Publisher: Penguin Group

First Published in the United States:  2004

ISBN: 1-59420-010-6 (hc.)

ISBN:  978-0-14-303490-2 (pbk.)

Type:  Fiction