The Shadow Of The Wind by CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON | Book Review

PUBLICATION YEAR: 2001 AUTHOR : Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Spanish) TRANSLATOR : Lucia Graves GENRE: Mystery SERIES : Cemetery of Forgotten Books PAGE COUNT: 506 FORMAT: Paperback BUY ONLINE: amazon

 Have you ever stayed up all night to finish binge watching a TV series as you can’t seem to stop after one episode due to its highly addictive content ? That’s how I felt while reading “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I don’t remember the last time I was so invested in a story. It was such a compelling and addictive story that you can’t help but binge read.

The story is about a boy named Daniel who gets obsessed with a book and its author.
When Daniel is ten years old, his father takes him to this place called “ The Cemetery of Forgotten Books “ where he finds a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He reads this book in no time and starts getting obsessed with it. As  he tries to find out more about the book and its author, he finds spectacular revelation about the life and alleged death of Julian Carax  . This begins his journey of finding the truth thereby saving the lives of all those people who Julian has left behind.

If you have been following my blog, then you might have noticed a pattern . Lately I have been reading a lot of novels whose story either revolves around Books or Authors or Library or anything Bookish related. Strange the Dreamer  had its main protagonist  a Librarian,The Collected Works of AJ Fikry had a bookstore owner as the main lead, Less revolved around the life of an author.  I swear I am not doing it on purpose . I have been subconsciously choosing books which happens  to have a plot around books. 😊

Coming back to the story, the thing that stood out for me was the spectacular atmosphere created by the author through his words. The book was essentially written in Spanish  and translated  into English by Lucia Graves who deserves an  applause .With a fairly formal  language , the author  beautifully crafted an environment set in Spain in the years 1945-1966 which successfully took me back to that era. The writing style is heavily descriptive yet you don’t mind reading them. The reason being - its fast pacing plot with mind boggling plot twists thrown  at you when you least expect it.

There were so many plots and subplots that could have potentially messed up my mind but surprisingly it didn’t. Each chapter ended with a bang and gave some kind of a revelation which compelled me to continue .

Daniel is the main protagonist who gets obsessed with this book “ The Shadow of the Wind “ and its author Julian Carax. So much is his obsession that he starts seeing his personal life immitating the plot of the book. His father seemed like a gentleman and I loved his equation with Daniel. Their relationship was that of respect ,love and care.

But the best character for me was Fermin who was like a caretaker of their shop . I loved the dynamic between Daniel and him .Fermin is absolutely hilarious who provides the comic relief to this eerie thrilling story .
He has some of the funniest lines in the story . Check this out- “ that sorry specimen is nothing but a corrupt pedant. A fascist buttock-polisher.” LOL..!!😛😃
He also gives wise advice to Daniel . Sample this- “Destiny is usually just around the corner. What destiny doesn’t do is home visits . You have to go for it yourself.”😊

 The main antagonist of the story was inspector Fumero who is potrayed as an utterly cold hearted villain . He gave me chills everytime he appeared in the story. One of the darkest character I have read so far.😨

I also loved reading about  Julian. Infact,   the mystery surrounding  him  and his book was a thriller novel in itself .

“ Childhood devotions make unfaithful and fickle lovers “
“Presents are made for the pleasures of the one who gives them, not for the merits of those who receive them”

It was keeping me at the edge of my seat. Throughout the book, I was in a dilemma of whether or not I want this story to end. On one hand , I was being impatient and curious  to know the final climax and on the other hand, I wanted  the story to continue as I was enjoying myself being absorbed in the lives of Daniel and company . This was a true testament to how enjoyable this book was .

Overall, it was a fast paced enjoyable read which deserves a full 5/5 rating . Never have I ever enjoyed a 500 page book from start to finish non stop . Even some of my favourite books suffer from minor hiccups in between where the plot is slow and  I lose interest , but this one was probably the only one which kept me engaged till the last sentence of the last page. 😊

RATING - 🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑 ( 5/5 )