There is something about South American writers- their mysteries are more than just that- they seep into dreams and take over your thoughts. Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez they inhabit the same world. Their characters are normal till the abnormal starts happening to them and they describe those abnormalities with such a sense of mystic mystery that though the solution sometimes falls short of the problem- but it makes your reading hours richer. The Shadow of the Wind occupies such a space in my mind.
To knock it down to bare bones it is the story of a young boy, Daniel Sempere. The life takes on exciting colours when his father introduces him to the Cemete
ry of Books. One book takes over his life, it gains him new friends and new enemies. Some enemies are apparent and some are hidden in the fog of the story’s end. It can also be described as a story about the different shades of love and its madness.
What holds your attention is the way Carlos Zafon weaves his story. It could have been dead and drab in the hands of another less talented writer, but Zafon knows his art and uses it with subtlety, introducing new villains and new friends the right times. Read it for the language and the beauty for it will surely add to your daydreams, as it did to mine.
