Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron

 

This book has been on my want to read list for quite some time.  One of the book clubs I attend picked it for this month's read and I was excited to dive in, but I didn't like it quite as much as I thought I would based on the star ratings on Goodreads.  I felt a bit like I was in a soap opera, walking along in the present with the main character.  Daniel starts out as a ten-year-old boy and gets to be age 18 in the main part of the story.  The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where Daniel went with his father was enchanting.  Just the right book was waiting for you among it's stacks and it would speak to you and let you find it.  Each book was there to be preserved for others.  So starts Daniel's desire to find out more about the author of his chosen book, Julien Carax, and to find more of his books.  But someone has been finding the few books there were and destroying them by setting them on fire.

The blurb from the back cover from Goodreads says:

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

Barcelona came to life in a dark way, the Barcelona of 1945 did not strike me as a place I would have wanted to visit.  It seemed like in the shadow of recovery from the war there was a lot of fear and darkness, all the homes and apartments that were visited were dark for the most part.  Some of the characters were very believable, but people falling in love in one day to me was not.  Being able to ascertain that a woman was pregnant one day after having had sex was not.

I both read a paperback copy and listened to an audio version and it was interesting that they were two different translations.  The print copy I have is the one the picture above came from, but the translators used different word choices in multiple places.  I wonder how the experience would have been if  I were able to read it in Spanish as it was written.  

I am not sure if being on a timeline to finish is what took some of the enjoyment out of it, but I do not think I will be hunting down more books in what appears to be a series about the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, though that was the part I most liked about this book so maybe I will change my mind.