Review - The Shadow of the Wind

[wilderthan]

I didn't get into this book, at first. I really wanted to because I'd read such glowing reviews at that point -- I have read less enthusiastic ones since then, but I'd heard only good about it when I picked it up, despite the fact that actually it was a random choice from the collections of abandoned books that are charity shops. I had a good feeling about it, when I picked it up. Anyway, it took me a while to get into -- the beginning, the idea of a Cemetary of Forgotten Books, that was amazing and I wanted more to be done with that. I wasn't so enamoured of the stuff about Clara -- I saw little point in it, even, and I'm still not entirely sure what the point was in terms of the main plot. I mean, a lot of other things come together, but not the Clara thread, really, considering so much time was spent on it.

It did pick up, after a while, and I didn't actually guess everything ahead of time, which is a plus. Some things I figured out juuuust before the text revealed it -- like the surprise siblings -- and was pretty pleased with myself for getting there just before the text did: I like it when a book does that to me. Once I was about one hundred pages into it, I found it more like a book I just couldn't put down.

There are some lovely phrases in it, too. I didn't find such startling beauty in it as other people did, but again, after one hundred pages or so, I started to find them.

I didn't like the way that every so often someone would tell Daniel a story and it would drop into italics, all reported actions, no real dialogue and such -- just summaries. It would have been a weightier book if they were written out properly, as a story-within-the-story, I suppose, but they would probably have been more interesting that way.

I ended up liking it, but I wouldn't say it blew me away.

(Since I didn't mention this above -- it's by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, translated by Lucia Graves.)

Comments

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

I am told that it is supposed to be a very good book, but I have become extremely wary of titles that get classed as 'arty' or 'high-concept'. They tend to involve abused children, dead parents, journeys of self-discovery by narcissists, etc.