I was completely
hooked by the first chapter of The Shadow
of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
The chapter was enticingly entitled “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books.” It is to this Cemetery of Forgotten Books
that protagonist Daniel Sempere’s father has brought him so that he may choose
a book of his own to protect for the rest of his life and make sure that it is never
forgotten.
“This is a place of
mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a
soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived
and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs
his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was
already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years
ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it
has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though.
When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned
to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it
gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are
lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new
reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no
owner. Every book you here has been somebody's best friend. Now they only have
us, Daniel. Do you think you'll be able to keep such a secret?” (page 6,
Penguin Books, softcover edition)
In that sacred place,
Daniel chooses a title by an author unknown to him, The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. And in that same sacred
place begins Daniel’s quest to find more works by Carax, works that are
impossible to find because a mysterious stranger has been destroying them as if
in an attempt to wipe clean the world of any evidence of the author’s
existence...
Eric recommended
Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind to me
with the promise of passages reminiscent of Garcia Márquez and Faulkner. Yes. Shadow
is a lush and juicy story within a story; a literary mystery full of suspense, romance,
and murder. It is the type of book to
read and re-read, to protect and make sure that it is never forgotten. When I came to the end of this book, I thought
back to a passage from the beginning, “Those
first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us
throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or
later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how
much we learn or forget—we will return.” (page 8, Penguin Books, softcover
edition)
