Rating: 
Summary: Take yourself back a few years
Review: There are very few books that will take you back through your own years as this one does. Thomas Williams' "The Moon Pinnace" does this magic, but none I think have done it as poetically as Carlos Ruiz Zafon has done in this beautiful novel. This book is one that will slow your reading as you near its end, not wanting to say farewell to what come to seem like old friends, and hoping that its author will write again very soon.
Rating: 
Summary: A Bloated and Overwrought Soap-Opera of A Book
Review: This bloated Spanish novel boasts the most overwrought prose this side of a Harlequin romance in a mix of thriller, historical fiction, tragic romance, gothic horror, and most of all, soap opera. Set sixty years ago in postwar Barcelona, the story concerns teenage Daniel, whose discovery of an obscure novel is the catalyst for this sprawling adventure. That novel is "The Shadow of the Wind" by a Julian Carax, a marginal exile writer who left Barcelona long ago to live in Paris, only to return later in life and die in murky circumstances. Daniel, the son of a widowed bookseller, becomes obsessed with the novel and its author, and so tries to track down more information about him. This leads him into the path of a mysterious disfigured man who is apparently tracking down and destroying every single copy of Carax's books. Meanwhile, there are a lot of other things going on, such as Daniel's coming of age into adulthood, his Romeo and Juliet romance, and persecution by an policeman who harbors some kind of grudge against Carax.
This all sounds fine, but the novel so filled with problems it's hard to take seriously. First of all, the highly self-concious prose is atrocious-florid metaphor piled upon metaphor. Second, the characters are all fairly stock figures. Daniel is a plucky precocious teenager whose speech is witty and clever far beyond plausibility. His eventual mentor/sidekick Fermin is a figure of Falstaffian excess combined with encyclopedic knowledge, a heart of gold, and the wisdom of the ages. Women in the book are beauties, some virginal, some femme fatalesque, but above all, beautiful. The policeman is simply evil wrapped in a black trenchcoat. Thirdly, the atmosphere is a pretty standard film noir stuff -- people lurking in long shadows, narrow streets, curfews, the oppression of the Franco era. No true sense of Barcelona, not even for readers who've been there. Fourthly, some of the revelations that occur late in the story will hardly be as stunning as the author must have intended. In this kind of book, when there's any hint of mystery about a central character's death, they're probably not dead. Or if there's someone who wears a mask, it's a good bet that when that mask is pulled off, the most unlikely face will be revealed. Finally, the profusion of plot points make for an overcomplicated, overdetailed, and over-the-top story which rambles on for far too long.
The author has clearly been influenced by the much better works of his countryman Arturo Perez-Reverté, but this reads like a comic book compared to Reverté's engrossing and polished prose. Coming in at 500 pages, the book requires a significant commitment, but few will find it time well spent -- even those like me who enjoy historically-set mysteries.
Rating:
Summary: Deserves every bit of praise it gets
Review: This book is amazing. I couldn't put it down and loved every bit of it. The imagery is lush, mysterious and evocative. The characters are all unforgettable and the translation is near-perfect. Just rippingly good stuff all-around. You'll love it.
Rating:
Summary: Superb!
Review: This has got to be with out a doubt, one of the best books that I have read. If you can read the book in Spanish, even if you must strugle a bit, better yet! Zafon simply takes the language of Cervantes and uses it as a brush with which to paint this wonderful and intriguing story of a father and son in 1940's Barcelona. This is a must book to read and treasure. It holds its own with the great ones.
Rating:
Summary: A seductive read!
Review: This novel apparently was a number one best seller in Spain for over a year when published in it's original Spanish. It is now available in a translated English language edition. The book is a marvelous page-turner with a wonderful plot that is made up of many elements. It's a coming of age story, a thriller, a love story, a lose of love story, of father's and daughters, of friends in youth, of friends in envy, and full of dark secrets and lies. Daniel's father, who runs a used bookstore, takes Daniel to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and asks Daniel to, chose one. Daniel's choice (a book titled THE SHADOW OF THE WIND) changes his whole life as hr searches to find other books by the same author. Why is someone buying and burning this author's books? Daniel sets out to discover the reason and in the process discovers and endless stream of characters whom all hold a piece of the puzzle. The Novel is extremely well written, such as this example: "....says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all out heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day. Every month we receive offers to turn our bookshop into a store selling televisions, girdles, or rope-soled shoes. They won't get us out of here unless it's feet first."
Similar to the way the exceptional narrator in the novel THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE takes you out into the streets of London, Daniel's first person account here takes you along with him into the streets of Barcelona... to find out who wrote and who wants to burn the last remaining copy of the "Shadow of the Wind". I guarantee you will enjoy this seductive read.
Rating: 
Summary: gripping melodrama
Review: When Daniel is still a child, his father takes him to the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, a mysterious labyrinthine library filled with books from well-known novels to those that have faded into obscurity. He chooses a novel called "The Shadow of the Wind" by Julian Carax, a writer of dark melodramas that never sold more than 100 copies. In the two decades since Carax's novels appeared in the 1920s and 1930s, they had gained a cult following in Barcelona, where Carax was raised and Daniel lives with his widowed father. Daniel vows to protect and cherish the novel so that it won't be totally forgotten.Daniel soon learns that nearly all of Carax's books have been burned in mysterious fires, and a man who calls himself Lain Coubert -- the name of the devil in one of Carax's novels -- soon appears in Daniel's life and threatens him if he doesn't give Coubert his copy of "The Shadow of the Wind." Daniel refuses and delves into the mysterious Julian Carax -- unwinding a story very much like one that Carax might have written: rich characters, tragedies, finding and losing love and growing up, all set within a plot of great twists and engaging writing
Rating:
Summary: "It was a dark and stormy night..."
Review: When eleven-year-old Daniel Sempere awakens early one morning, screaming, because he has suddenly forgotten the face of his deceased mother, his devoted father comforts him. As dawn breaks, Daniel's father, a bookseller, takes him on his first visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret, maze-like library which preserves books "no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time." Each person who visits must adopt a book, guaranteeing that it will never disappear, and when Daniel sees The Shadow of the Wind, he knows it "had been waiting for me there for years, probably since before I was born." Captivated by this book by Julian Carax, Daniel tries to find out more about its mysterious author and locate additional novels, but he discovers that some other unknown seeker is also searching for Carax's books--in order to burn them. Lovers of the Gothic romance will be handsomely rewarded by the action-filled plot, as a sensitive and loving young boy comes of age while trying to unravel the mysteries associated with the elusive Julian Carax. A ghostly apparition in the misty lamplight, a faceless man who seems to have an inordinate interest in Daniel, a sadistic police inspector, and an incarnation of the devil himself all materialize as Daniel begins his search for information about Carax. Heavy, sensual imagery creates a sense of foreboding, while night-time mists, storms, and winter cold add atmosphere to sensational scenes and coincidences. A mysterious photograph, letters which go astray, false identities, an abandoned mansion with a sobbing ghost, a matricide, an evil stepfather, thwarted love, mysterious disappearances, revenge which never dies, and murder most foul all complicate the action. The evil characters are truly villainous, Daniel and his father are truly virtuous, and the women whom Daniel and Julian Carax love are pure and true of heart. Though the novel offers a good escape, it is almost six hundred pages long. Extensive background information for virtually all the characters (and even a house) gives more information than the reader really needs, and many scenes could be compressed. Occasionally, the mood is broken by mild profanity and bathroom humor. This romance does achieve more relevance than some others, however, by being directly connected to the world of books, with a setting that reflects the political climate of Spain after the Civil War and World War II. The characters are memorable, if relatively uncomplicated, and the parallels between Daniel's coming-of-age and the story of Julian Carax offer some sense of universality to this otherwise sensational melodrama. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: FUTURE BEST SELLER
Review: WOW!!!!! COULD BE THE MOST ENGROSSING BOOK I EVER READ. THIS WILL BE A WORD OF MOUTH BOOK THAT WILL BE RECCOMENDED OVER AND OVER AGAIN BY PEOPLE WHO ARE LUCKEY ENOUGH TO READ IT. IT IS THE KIND OF BOOK THAT TRUE BOOK LOVERS WILL HAVE THEIR SOCKS BLOWN OFF. A MASTERPIECE OF STORYTELLING. I READ IT IN TWO SITTINGS AND HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT ANOTHER FOR A PERSON WHO WILL APPRECIATE IT. I PREDICT, THAT JUST LIKE IN SPAIN, WHEN THE WORD GETS OUT, THIS BOOK WILL INDEED MAKE THE BESTSELLER LIST. GREAT CHARACTERS AND GREAT PLOT. PLEASE, BUY THE BOOK, READ IT, AND THEN WATCH THIS CLIMB UP AND UP TO #1. THERE ARE SO MANY POOR BOOKS OUT THERE THAT DON'T DESERVE BEST SELLER STATUS. THIS ONE DOES. THANK YOU CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON FOR A REMARKABLE BOOK.
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