Tony92 19/01/2022
It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.
I loved this book so much. So much so that if I could marry it I would. You come across books in your life that you cherish when reading and this is one of them. It is so beautifully written. The description of the city of Barcelona, The Aldaya Mansion, the Cemetery of forgotten books is so grand and full of taste and flavour. It is also filled with some wonderful quotes.
The book is a coming-of-age story about a ten-year boy named Daniel who discovers a book by Julián Carax called The Shadow Of The Wind. After reading and loving it he wants to read more of the author's books but all of them have been mysteriously burned and Julián is thought to have died many years ago. The more Daniel finds out about Julián the more unanswered questions he has so he spends the next decade unraveling the author's life and secrets which put him, his family, and people from Juliáns past in danger. The book is about a book and its author, the people within his life, and anyone who has ever read it.
The narrative is very intriguing and brilliantly paced. How the author connects the main plot of the story with many other subplots in which those subplots have subplots was amazing. I loved seeing Daniel grow up working in the bookshop with his father going through normal teenage things with friends and young love with the blind girl Clara and his best friend's sister Bea all while being caught up in the danger of Julián Carax. Also, I loved just how much his life mirrored that of Julián in strange ways.
This book also made me laugh at times and that is thanks to Fermín the man brought in from a homeless life on the streets and befriended by Daniel. Fermín was an eccentric self-professed lady's man with a flair for words and an eye for women as well as books who has a troubled past. Some of my favourite quotes by him: "People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots" and "Contrary to what you believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch." I could write a whole page of the amusing things he has said.
The more I read the more I fell in love. I found myself reading at a slow smooth pace wanting to savor every word. The book made me smile and it saddened me. It shocked me at times when secrets were revealed and also gave me that warm fuzzy feeling as the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood as I got to the end. The ending made me so happy when reading it but still a tiny bit sad. What happened to Penelope was so awful and heart-wrenching.
The author ended it very well it couldn't have ended any better. The book has love, passion, friendship, hardship, laughs, murder, and secrets you will never see coming. I wish I could erase it from my memory and read it all over again.
Some quotes I liked.
"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you."
"People tend to complicate their own lives as if living weren't already complicated enough."
"Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader than the first book that finds its way to his heart."
"Only three or four things are worth living for; the rest is shit."