Review of “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
3 stars? 4 stars? I'm not sure myself. This book had excellent highs and lows that made it difficult to really pin down a single rating.
To give a brief synopsis, The Shadow of the Wind follows Daniel Sempre, the son of a bookseller who happens upon the titular book within the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Following this development, he is drawn into the mystery of its author, Julian Carax, and the mystery as to why every copy of Carax’s works has been systematically destroyed. Set amongst the backdrop of a healing Barcelona, the book is full of drama, murder, and love.
Barcelona breathes in this story. She exists as the setting, seeps through the characters, whistles as the shadow of the wind itself. Zafón has crafted an incredible ode to storytelling, one that revolves around a mystery infused with the smell of sulfur, and he does so with incredible prose and style. This story drips with such gothic imagery that it's impossible to not visualize the scenes unfolding before you in all of its burnished glory. Street after street, line by line, you are drawn into this tale of romance, death, sin, until there is nothing left but a trail of burnt pages.
Unfortunately, as Zafón weaves the threads of angels and devils into something thick with promise, it all becomes rendered null by the last third of the novel. Perhaps that's just the fate of a story so entangled with other stories, for the only way to make sense of it all would be to flatten the narrative with logic. For all its incredible atmosphere and intrigue, one that becomes increasingly layered as the story progresses, there comes the point where the veil must be lifted. That's where The Shadow of the Wind completely lost me. The ending attempts to root its disparate themes into one story, when really, I felt as though the themes were intrinsically linked in a manner that didn't need to be said. Until all of the potential of this novel becomes swept under this need to have a singular truth - one that relies on shock value more than anything else. Everything is neatly tied up, brooking no other truth, and the book transitions from showing sleights of hand to, essentially, a monologue of telling. I found this direction to be antithetical to the love Zafón evidently has for reading, for books, for writing, and this shift is jarring. I felt as though the story escaped his own control, grown far too bloated and complicated to be easily shown through just Daniel. The story truly suffers for it.
There were elements I wished Zafón touched on more as well. Daniel and his father's relationship. How his forgotten memories of his mother played into the themes. Why parallels between Daniel’s stories and life existed, and why we should even care. For the first two, I was willing to forgive due to the fact that there are more books in the series, but I feel as though my last gripe is a central disappointment to me.
However, I try not to let just the ending be what defines my reading experience. For the most part, I was thoroughly entertained by Zafón's capabilities of a storytelling, the scope he attempted with this tale, and his wonderful prose. It was truly an overall enjoyable story, one that I admire and appreciate for its detail and tender moments. I was chilled by the mystery, the devilish villain, the house with weeping stone angels.
A hard book to define. Should the story be defined by the end? By how it failed to conclude its promises? Or would it have been enough to know what it could have been, to appreciate the mind that crafted the story? How does one review writing that has such jarring changes in storytelling? I'm not sure. Just that I loved and hated parts of this book, but I'm still glad I could experience Zafón's Barcelona. With its mentions to a Civil War as a backdrop, the story is much closer to that strange, nebulous territory between reality and the fantastical that I wanted (compared to Catherynne M. Valente's Deathless which utilizes the story/country angle but in a much more confusing manner).
Or maybe, the disappointing end is just the shadow of what could have been — a story so potent and sweeping at its start, it’s as invisible and powerful as the wind.
