First impression review: The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I started hearing a lot about this book recently: that is was this gorgeously written tale about a boy who finds a book and goes on a search for the author that turns into an “epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love” in post-civil-war Barcelona. Well, that sounded extremely intriguing, so imagine my delight when my mom handed off a sack of books, and this was among them! And how was it? Well, while I have some critiques (which I’ll get to), it certainly lived up to the hype in being a magical, utterly absorbing read!
When we meet our narrator, Daniel, the son of a bookshop owner, he is 10 years old and mourning the loss of his mother. To comfort him, his father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books:
A labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves rose from base to pinnacle like a beehive woven with tunnels, steps, platforms, and bridges that presaged an immense library of seemingly impossible geometry…I could make out about a dozen human figures…I recognized faces of various colleagues of my father’s… ‘This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul…When a library disappears, or a book shop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place…make sure that it gets here’.”
He is sworn to secrecy, and allowed to choose one book, of which he will be the guardian. Now, honestly, I was hooked on just that! I could have read a whole novel about this secret library. But the book Daniel selects, ‘The Shadow of the Wind’, leads him on a different journey. Daniel devours the book even faster than I did this one and goes to look for more works by the author, Julián Carax. He discovers that they are not available; they never sold well to begin with, and someone has been devoting themselves to tracking down every remaining copy and burning it. As he grows up and follows the trail of Carax, Daniel falls in love at least twice, catches the attention of a sinister police inspector named Fumero, nearly dies, and makes a gem of a friend.
Fermín Romero de Torres is hands-down the best thing in this book. Daniel first encounters him after he gets his ass kicked by the boyfriend of an older girl he has a crush on and is offered a drink by talkative beggar who claims to have been a secret agent for the former Republican government1. When Daniel’s father needs a hand in the shop to help track down special orders “someone very special, half detective, half poet, someone who won’t charge much or be afraid to tackle the impossible”, Daniel knows just who to hire. Fermín soon becomes both indispensable to the shop and a sort of fairy godfather to Daniel, with a penchant for sarcasm, theatrical rants, and doling out relationship advice. His lines are pure gold:
[On meeting Daniel’s burly inventor friend Tomás]: “Watch out, my friend, for what you have here isn’t a hand, it’s a hydraulic press. I need violinist’s fingers for my work with the firm…So tell me, where do you stand on Fermat’s theorem?”
[Regarding a client]: “’That sorry specimen is both pedantic and corrupt. A fascist buttock polisher,’ Fermín declared, raising his fist and striking the pose he reserved for his avenging moods. ‘With the pitiful excuse of his professorship and final exams, he would even have it off with Gertrude Stein, given the chance.’”
[When Daniel is moping over a girl]: “’Calm down or you’ll grow a stone in your liver…This business of courtship is like a tango: absurd and pure embellishment. But you’re the man and you must take the lead.’ It was all beginning to look pretty grim. ‘The lead? Me?’ ‘What do you expect? One has to pay some price for being able to piss standing up.’”
The way Fermín salivates over women and sometimes gets a little handsy is his least attractive quality – a widespread issue, as I’ll discuss in a moment - but he’s getting over it by the end, even if it is for the benefit of someone else rather than on general principle. While Inspector Fumero goes after multiple characters, Fermín is the only one he has a purely philosophical beef with2. While he worked for whichever side in the war needed a killer, Fumero is at heart a Fascist – so, naturally, he can’t stand a pleasure-loving intellectual anarcho-socialist with a wicked sense of humor. He really wants to break Fermín but, while the scrawny little man bears physical and mental scars from their first encounter (including guilt, because he did eventually talk), he is surprisingly resilient and defiant. When Fumero has Don Federico, a gay watchmaker who is a regular at the bookshop, arrested at his drag show and thrown in the cells to be assaulted, Fermín is ready to burn down the police station, even though Fumero is his own personal bogeyman. Daniel’s father talks him down, and he simply brings snacks and flowers and helps the neighbors watch over Don Federico as he recovers.
1. As in the left-leaning government opposing General
Franco. More on the Nationalist capture of Catalonia and what happened to the Republicans
here.
2. Rather than having a personal vendetta (in the case of Carax) or seeing them as a tool to get to someone else.
I have mixed feelings about how Don Federico is used in the story. On the one hand, I like that, although everyone in the neighborhood knows about his private life (which is highly scandalous for 1950s Barcelona), they all love him and rally around when he needs help. On the other hand, the details of the attacks he suffered in jail, though not more extensive than in the similar abuses faced by Melesio/Mimí in ‘Eva Luna’, feel more like a gratuitous play on the reader’s emotions. Mimí is a major character and what happened to her is part of her character arc, not Eva’s; Once free, she decides nothing is going to stop her from actually living as a woman and following her dreams of acting, because pretending didn't keep her safe and nothing could be harder than surviving that. While Don Federico does at least reappear to help out Daniel and Fermín when they, in turn, are Fumero’s targets – an admirable bit of courage on his part – that is still part of Daniel’s story. And the “happy ending” he’s given in the postscript where he gets paired up with a woman is just plain weird. Granted, finding a “beard” might be a smart move in the circumstances, but no indication is given that that is what is meant3. At least he apparently still does drag!
3. And before you say this writing is “a product of the times”: ‘Eva Luna’ was written in 1987, 14 years earlier than this book!
While I’m on the subject, I want to talk about Miquel. He is Julián Carax’s closest friend, saving his life, secretly supporting his writing, even literally dying for him. I find him a rather tragic figure, because Julián never seems to properly appreciate him. And when a woman named Nuria is telling part of that story, this happened:
[Nuria]: “Miquel liked to talk to me about books…but above all about his old friend Julián…He kept a collection of old photographs of, and stories written by, a teenage Julián. Miquel adored Julián, and, through his words and his memories, I came to know him, or at least to create an image in his absence. A year after we had met, Miquel confessed that he had fallen in love with…” [Me, confidently]: “Julián” [Nuria]: “…me.” [Me, confused]: “Huh? Really?”
OK, look – I like to think I’d do quite a lot for my best friends, and there should absolutely be devoted friendships in fiction; I certainly like Fermín just as he is. But the way Miquel and his interactions with Julián are described, I maintain my reaction was a reasonable one. Another childhood friend of Julián, a priest, responds with an incredulous:“Miquel, married?” when told Miquel is Nuria’s husband. Miquel is convinced he will die young and keeps saying: “The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours, Julián.” He arranges a plan for Julián to elope with his girlfriend, Penélope:
“’It’s the perfect plan, Miquel,’ Julián said. Miquel nodded sadly. ‘Except in one detail. The pain you are going to cause a lot of people by going away forever.’ Julián nodded, thinking of his mother and Jacinta. It did not occur to him that Miquel Moliner was talking about himself…The two friends embraced without a word. Julián had never seen Miquel Moliner cry…The train had already begun to slide along the platform when Julián turned around to say goodbye to his friend. Miquel Moliner stood there watching him, his hands sunk in his pockets. ‘Write,’ he said. ‘I’ll write to you as soon as I get there,’ answered Julián. ‘No. Not to me. Write books….Write them for me, for Penélope4…And keep your dreams…You never know when you might need them.’ ‘Always,’ murmured Julián, but the roar of the train had already stolen his words.”
Do you see what I mean? We never get to see anything like that level of devotion or emotional vulnerability from Penélope…and that’s just what we see before the conversation with Nuria. Considering how this book likes dramatic and/or tragic love stories, it feels like a missed opportunity.
4. Who, it is clear by this point, isn’t coming.
The objectifying attitudes of the male characters toward women are, unfortunately, probably period accurate – but the romantic portions of the novel itself have more of that quality than I prefer. For instance, the only requirements for Daniel to fall in love seem to be “pretty and likes books”. His main love interest, Bea, does indeed sound gorgeous…but who is she, really? Daniel sort of knows her as the sister of Tomás, but they’ve only been on two dates before he is ready to potentially blow up both their lives to be with her. Because the novel uses a lot of parallelism, we get two sequences of a doctor declaring a 17-year-old is probably pregnant a day or two after she first has sex – which is not how pregnancy or pregnancy tests work! Daniel and Julián are teenagers themselves, so the impulsive way they approach romance is totally believable; I just want to get both young women to away from their idiot suitors AND their overbearing fathers and brothers! Speaking of which, Julián’s father is a terrible abusive husband, but the end of the book makes you feel sorry for him. That’s fine – people who ruin their lives with their own shitty behavior are indeed rather pitiable – I just wish it was balanced with showing us his ex-wife in Argentina, finally being happy! The only romance I was actively rooting for was Fermín’s courtship of the maid Bernarda. Both were established early as kind people with distinct personalities who have suffered too much in life. Their relationship is both heart-warmingly wholesome and passionate. Fermín knows how to pace himself and make sure he isn’t going to cause problems for Bernarda. He’s adorably anxious about whether he’d be a good dad, since Bernarda almost certainly wants kids; Daniel assures him that of course he’d be brilliant at it, which is absolutely true!
Overall recommendation: Despite my critiques, this is a good book and I’m very glad I read it. It has beautiful prose and, as mentioned, I would have read it just for the secret library and Fermín! There are simply some elements that keep it from perfection that needed to be mentioned, as while some readers might not care, for others those flaws might ruin the story.
