Revisiting Books Long Since Read 5 - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafón, New York: Penguin, 2004, Translated by Lucia Graves.

Another novel I read some ten years ago is called The Shadow of the Wind by a Spanish writer by the name of Carlos Ruiz Zafón.  The blurb on this tome – and it is a big book which runs to over 400 pages – reads like a sustained eulogy, singing praise after praise for this author and his magnum opus.  A reader will readily agree with these accurate assessments very soon after beginning this book.

Firstly, let’s have some information about the author, though this is in no way necessary for the reader to know.  After finishing this tour de force of a novel, shot through with the energy and passion of such Gothic classics as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley or say, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, I was driven by inquisitiveness to find out some information on Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Well briefly then, he was born in Barcelona in 1964 only a block away from Gaudi’s famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia.  One piece of information about Zafón which is undoubtedly important to his style of writing is the fact that he worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles for several years.  No wonder, then, that he is such a superb and skilled plotmaker.  He published four novels for young adults before escaping totally into the world of imagination to write The Shadow of the Wind, a novel that has become an international literary phenomenon in over 20 countries. His novels have been translated into more than thirty languages and published in over forty countries and they have sold three million copies all over the world.

In any event, I don’t wish to write another book review of this now modern classic, as many brilliant ones can be found on the net.  See the following link for many good reviews from newspapers all over the world REVIEWS.  All I wish to sketch here are my own thoughts on this marvellous book.

I have quoted over and over again in these pages my favourite definition of style: “Le style c’est l’homme même" (Buffon).  Given this, we can say that Carlos Ruiz is a master of self-knowledge and the expression of that self-knowledge with a style that is truly unique.  This book reads at a passionate and energetic pace.  Beautiful images from all the five senses, similes and metaphors just teem from his bountiful pen.  The author is a lover of words and before long he has us enchanted and firmly under his spell. One is enthralled as I have said as under a spell.  We are almost at a movie, so vivid are the scenes that Carlos Ruiz can paint with his words.  It’s like viewing an old Boris Karloff film or an Orson Welles movie.  As I have said above the Gothic novel is not dead, The Shadow of the Wind fits firmly and comfortably within this category or genre of fiction.  We are presented with all the decaying old mansions, the back streets and the dark passageways along with all the larger-than-life characters.

There are certain similarities with the writings of Umberto Eco, say The Name of the Rose – I allude to the level of the historical detective.  This novel is at once a thriller and a love story.  There is also a very deep understanding of psychology at work in this novel.  It deals with the human heart's deepest concerns – the meaning of life, of friendship and of love.  However, the love portrayed is obsessive to an extreme degree, if the qualification here is not tautology.   There are also other obsessions at work – obsessions with literature, with Barcelona, the city where the novel is set, and of course obsessions with revenge and with death – all the stuff of Gothic horror.  It is also quasi-Freudian because we have sons looking for their fathers or rather for their inner father and daughters and sons looking for long-lost mothers.

The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller's art. For us Irish the importance of the seanachaí or storyteller cannot be underestimated.  Zafón is an enthralling and brilliant seanachaí.   There is probably a more suitable word for this in the Spanish tradition.  However, Zafón is a storyteller in a totally different way to, say the blockbuster novel writer, Dan Brown.  Okay, Dan can spin a good yarn; can be a master of suspense etc but his books and stories lack the passion, the style, the love of language, books, literature, psychology and love of place one finds in Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind in abundance.

This book is also a compelling political thriller with a sweeping historical romance, taking in the results of the savagery of the civil war, the world of the tainted Spanish aristocracy and of course the dark secrets born of Franco's tyranny. Plenty of love, magic, murder, madness, labyrinths of streets and of books, and twists and turns of plot to keep even the most reluctant reader engaged. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there is almost “a novel within a novel” in place of the “play within a play.”  There are two parallel stories running side by side.  These are seamlessly interwoven one with the other.

In summary, then, we may say that this book is at turns scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling.  Moreover, The Shadow of the Wind is in the final analysis about the healing and liberating power of the imagination and Zafón’s tour de force is equally matched by the beautifully stylish translation of Lucia Graves.