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Book Reviewed by:Comment: Shadow of the Wind
is a complex and sometimes long winded novel (480 pages) that has
drawn comparisons to books such as The Name
of the Rose and Foucault's
Pendulum. It combines elements of romance, mystery
and crime into one big paella of a book, whilst also exploring many
aspects of love - the love of a good book, the love of parents for
their children, of unrequited, unspoken and rejected love and of
love lost.
Set in Barcelona in the 1950s, it tells the
story of 18 year-old Daniel Sempre, who finds a mysterious book in
an equally mysterious library, by a little known author, Julian
Carax. So enamored is he of the author that he sets out to
find out more about him and track down any other books he might have
written. However, he finds that not only has Carax written
nothing else but that it seems someone is systematically eradicating
all copies of the book by any means possible, including murder - and
his might be the very last one in existence.
Shadow of the Wind has been widely praised;
one of the most glowing comments comes from Kirkus Reviews which
says it "will keep you up nights-and it'll be time well
spent. Absolutely marvelous." However, there is a less glowing
reaction from the reviewer at Publishers Weekly who feels that "Ruiz
Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its
complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors... Yet
the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining
for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the
Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel." As
always, you can decide for yourself by browsing the excerpt at
BookBrowse, which has been expertly translated by Lucia Graves,
daughter of the author and poet Robert Graves (I, Claudius et al).
This review
first ran in the February 2, 2005
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
If you liked Shadow of the Wind, try these:
by Michael Zapata
Published 2021
The mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans.
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards
by Kristopher Jansma
Published 2014
An inventive and witty debut about a young man's quest to become a writer and the misadventures in life and love that take him around the globe
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