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Book Summary and Reviews of Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Marina

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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  • Jul 2014, 336 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

"We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine."

When Fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in Barcelona, no one knows his whereabouts for seven days and seven nights.

His story begins when he meets the strange Marina while he's exploring an old quarter of the city. She leads Oscar to a cemetery, where they watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the last Sunday of each month. At exactly ten o'clock in the morning, a woman shrouded in a black velvet cloak descends from her carriage to place a single rose on an unmarked grave.

When Oscar and Marina decide to follow her, they begin a journey that transports them to a forgotten postwar Barcelona - a world of aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons - an reveals a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's haunting Marina has long been a cult classic in Spain and is now an international bestseller.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. With elements of romance, mystery, and horror, none of them overwhelming the other, this complex volume that hints at Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manages to weave together three separate stories for a cohesive and eerie result." - School Library Journal

"Starred Review. Zafón is a master of both the subtle simile and the outrageous image... Unlikely discoveries in mysterious, half-ruined mansions alternate with spine-tingling action sequences to create a grotesquerie that will delight horror fans. Ages 12 and up." - Publishers Weekly

"High-quality gothic genre fiction with a classic Mary Shelley sensibility." - Kirkus

"Originally published in Spain in 1999, this sweeping gothic mystery from Zafón (The Watcher in the Shadows, 2013) delivers gritty atmosphere, perilous action, propulsive storytelling, and ghastly body horror, all tempered by a bittersweet romance." - Booklist

This information about Marina was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Sharonya Banerjee

Carlos Ruiz Zafò's Marina takes the reader to the lost world of aristocrats, inventors, and actors
This novel is written by Carlos Ruiz Zafòn, and the title of the book is Marina. It was published in the year of 1999.

The summary of this book, is that Oscar meets a girl full of mist while returning the watch that he stole by mistake exploring the lost corner of Barcelona. Marina takes Oscar to an old cemetery, where a macabre ritual takes place every Sunday of the last week of the month. The ritual happens to be that, a mysterious lady, shrouded with black cloak descends from her cart, and places a rose on an unmarked grave. The story takes an unexpected turn when Marina and Oscar follows the lady to solve the mystery.

In my opinion, I enjoyed the suspense that is withheld throughout the story, but few things were a bit off to me. For an example, Marina lies to Oscar that her father has an illness, but in reality, she has been diagnosed. She doesn’t disclose it. It would be much more straightforward if she had.

All in all I enjoyed the book, not page turner though. I would strongly advocate this book to folks who love Gothic literature, or someone who is looking for a Halloween read. I personally am not that fond of Gothic literature, but wouldn’t mind to read one.

I would give it a solid three out of five. Immensely absorbing, but not really my genre.

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Author Information

Carlos Ruiz Zafon Author Biography

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of two critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling novels, The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game, was one of the world's most-read and best-loved writers. His work, which also includes prizewinning young adult novels, has been translated into more than fifty languages and published around the world, garnering numerous international prizes and reaching millions of readers. He died from colon cancer in June 2020 aged 55.

Author Interview
Link to Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Website

Other books by Carlos Ruiz Zafon at BookBrowse
  • The Angel's Game jacket
  • Shadow of the Wind jacket

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