The Shadow of the Wind

2020
Eleven-year-old Daniel Sempere one day wakes up in the middle of the night and finds out he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his grief and desperation, his father, an antiquarian book dealer, takes him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, ‘a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again'. The chosen book will have a special meaning for the chooser. The boy selects a book named The Shadow of the Wind, by one Júlian Carax.
Sempere's son, so in love with the novel that he read in one sit, starts a quest for the rest of Carax's works. That is when he discovers that his volume is the last one, as someone is destroying this author's books.
Needing to find the truth about what is really happening, we as readers are drowned into Barcelona's darkest stories, magic and doomed loves (and lovers) as we follow Daniel's trajectory to protect the ones he truly cares.
That not-so-good (= crap) synopsis above summaries the back cover of one of my favourite books of all time. One that I have read every year since 2014.
And every time I try to explain my unconditional love for the The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, I fail so miserably that I turn my long (and bitchy) face and just answer “Deal with it”, instead.
Written in first-person, Daniel is our main character and a coward hero. A young boy in the need of discovering himself (in the needing of discover himself) - as a grown man and a not just a boy who found a book by a cursed author - while trying to figure out why something so unimaginable happened in his life.
The Carax Quest is followed closed-eye by Fermín, an undernourished sharp-tongued man that will work at Sempere and son's bookshop (after an uncharacteristic beginning). He is our main author surrogate, setting the reader in Barcelona's after 1945 war scenario.
Every clue that leads to Julian history is persecuted (like in those old cop movies that you need false identities to get some information from) and most of the background is presented by reports of those who lived with the writer during the past, and sometimes, letters.
Those flashbacks are probably my favourite chapters, once, in an almost movie-like sensation, the reader is guided through the fogged film that divvies the present with the fragile past.
The idea of Barcelona being filled with cursed writers, the amount of mystic and dark scenarios, pasts and shadowed and broken lives that the city did not forgive, gives the prose a suspended fear sensation, involving the reader in every word.
The writing is absolutely beautiful and poetic - a prose so well written that sometimes, you lost yourself for words - and draw you into this complex plot that slowly unfolds before you.
I amazedly enjoyed this book, but I wouldn't say it was the best book ever - as in I have not read all books in my TBR pile that are claimed to be epic yet.
It is not a perfect book.
The problem lies with the middle. Where it is obvious that Chekhov's gun technique has been forgotten for the well-being of the poetic prose, the long prose can sometimes be a bit too long, losing its objective to the main cause of the plot.
Moreover, some decisions took by Zafon during the storyline - such as the loss of some friendship, some Daniel's behaviour, especially regarding his father, who loves him the most and are just the two of them, some unpredictable lovers - are totally against my believes and judgments, wrapping me to think that an alternative cause of action was possible.
Nevertheless (she persisted LOL), I still in love with that book. I truly enjoy the parallels between Julian and Daniel, that the intertwined relationship and all correlations between past and present, brings a lot of richness and unexpected similarities with the crossed timeline; however, resulting in s different course of action that any foreshadowing suggestion could possibly bring it on. Even knowing by heart the big ending (and the breath and speechless life plot twist), the story still holding my attention tight, as the first time I read it. And everything started with s book.
As I said before, it is not a perfect book. Nor is the utmost favourite one. However, it is the first book that pops up in my mind at any moment I think of a story that lifts me from the ground. Ever reread, unnoticed things display in the universe, becoming even more entertained. It is not a light and easy-going read. Instead, I highly recommend that lecture.
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2016 - O goodreads acaba de colocar que demorei 2 anos para ler esse livro rindo litros
Mas deixemos assim.
Acho que gosto do Daniel por ele ser um herói covarde, por assim dizer. Gosto da história, não apenas pelo lirismo da escrita, mas por tudo ser intrincado e ter conexão quando você menos espera.
Tenho que parar de rasgar seda por esse livro. Fim

2014/2015 - É simplesmente fantástico. Umas das melhores leituras deste século (e do próximo e do outro e do seguinte...).
Já li a Sombra do vento três vezes e a cada leitura, é como se o livro se abrisse em uma nova história, com novos detalhes, sem perder o brilho da escrita romantizada e bem pensada de Zafón. É fabulosa a forma como ele descreve uma Barcelona tão sombria, triste e enfadada a uma sepultura cinza, em algo mágico e quase perfeito pra qualquer um viver...
A riqueza das personagens, que, embora não tenhamos muita idéia de como seja Daniel (a imagem do menino bem apessoado, no meu caso, formo-se melhor depois de ler o Jogo do Anjo e o Prisioneiro do Céu - embora ambos tenham deixado-me perturbada por algum tempo - pois traz uma melhor descrição de personagens como o Sr. Sempere e até mesmo o David Martim).
O mistério sempre se renova mesmo sabendo do grande desfecho, que, na minha opinião, fora um dos melhores que já vi em minha curta trajetória literária.

Bom, recomendo imensamente este livro a qualquer um. Não é uma leitura fácil a princípio, mas... o livro como um todo vale a pena cada palavra lida.