The plot starts out in a relatively straightforward manner. As a young boy, Daniel Sempere’s father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Half the most maze-like library ever described and half a tomb, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books is where books are taken to be saved. According to tradition, when someone goes to the Cemetery for the first time they are allowed to take a book on the condition that they will always protect it. A book called The Shadow of the Wind written by a man named Julián Carax intrigues Daniel on his first trip. He takes it home and falls in love with the story, thus setting off a multi-year quest to find out more about both the book and the author. Throughout the story, he runs afoul of corrupt policemen, liars, thieves and a shadowy man determined to burn everything Carax ever wrote. Daniel finds intrigue, love and pain as his own life becomes more and more intertwined with the mysteries presented by both The Shadow of the Wind and Julián Carax.
What makes this book so unique is the way Zafón presents his story. He keeps you teetering on the edge through most of it, unsure of whether it is grounded in reality or has a magical presence. There is Laín Coubert, a the mysterious man who smells of smoke, has the same name as the devil in Carax’s book and wants to destroy everything Carax ever did. Is he a man or is he a demon? Is the house where the love of Carax’s life lived truly haunted or just abandoned? These questions and more follow the reader through the book from the poignantly sweet realizations of Daniel’s first love, to the truly haunting moments of terror, to the funny antics of various side characters around Daniel.
While The Shadow of the Wind flirts with form and style, it remains steady throughout with wonderful characterization and evocative settings. The people that fill up the world are complex and thought provoking. Most of them have several sides that turn up throughout the novel, leaving the reader unsure of whom to trust outside of Daniel’s core group of friends and family. Much like Daniel himself, the reader must sort through half-truths and lies, told to protect or destroy others in order to get a clear grasp of what happened to Julián Carax.
Set in post-Civil War Barcelona, the book draws the reader into a rich and fully realized world. Given the level of detail and the loving way Barcelona is described, it is unsurprising the book has now inspired walking tours in Barcelona. The city becomes as much as a character as anyone else in the book, seeming loving and warm in one instance or cold and hard in the next.
When all is said and done, The Shadow of the Wind is a book about loving books and how loving literature can drive a person’s life for good or ill. Zafón clearly adores his own medium and wants his readers to love it as much as he does. Personally, I think he succeeds. The Shadow of the Wind is a wonderful book, the kind of book you do not want to put down and, especially, do not want to ever end.
