Carlos Ruiz Zafon has made a name for himself writing popular magical realist novels set in the murky Barcelona of the 20's to the 40's. The central themes always revolve around books, their authors and how a book reveals its authors soul. What this book reveals about Zafon is disappointing. David Martin is a struggling writer whom fate has dealt a nasty hand. Abandoned by his mother and following the murder of his father, he is taken under the wing of Pedro Vidal a wealthy heir. He falls in love with Cristina Sagnier but their love isn't meant to be. Embittered, he retreats to a (supposedly) cursed house and receives a commission - To write a religious text which uses the basis of religion to formulate a new way of living for people to follow. This aim is never clearly spelt out. His client is a shadowy, mysterious publisher called Andreas Corelli - he may be a ghost, and as things get more intense, it is obvious that everything is not as it seems. Allow me an aside - No novel conveys the problems faced by the author in rounding off a plot more than The French Lieutenant's Woman. Fowles explains in his wonderful novel that every author acts as a mouthpiece for his characters, they lead him where they want to go. This prompted him to write two endings to the novel, the one he wanted and the one he felt the characters led him to. It was a wonderful, innovative way to communicate with the audience, and truly addressed the art of writing . Zafon subverts this rule. I do not expect two endings to every novel, (that would become derivative in itself) but the characters do not shine and are simply filled into slots - beautiful doomed love (check), evil villain (check), self destructive author (check), hot flirtatious Spanish assistant (Check) decent man in love with said assistant (Check). There is no effort to make these characters distinct or relatable and what's worse is that the entire book is narrated from Daniel's jaundiced point of view - boring at the best of times and throw - the - book - at - the - wall frustrating at the worst. The central conceit of this book (which forms the second part of a trilogy known as The Cemetery of Forgotten Books - the first book The Shadow of the Wind to which this serves as a prequel, of sorts) is an abandoned library - cathedral like - with a multitude of disappearing passages filled with abandoned books. A person entering the cemetery is sworn to secrecy and allowed to take one book. He must, in addition, swear to protect it with his life for as long as he lives. A true bibliophile would be drooling , a central mystery surrounding books and a forgotten library. To manufacture a thrilling story full of secret societies and discovery would have been entertaining but Zafon disappoints. The Cemetery of Books acts as a device to drive the plot forward. If two people or events need to come in contact with each other the Cemetery of Books serves an easy and convenient place to manufacture this interaction. This is evident in The Shadow of the Wind where Julian Carax's book is discovered by a young Daniel Sempere within the Cemetery. The plot device repeats here. Despite these annoying contrivances, there is no doubt that Zafon is an excellent writer, though uncontrolled and feeling the need to hammer his excellence into the reader at every opportunity. Though poorly stage managed, he has an intricate plot in place (with a poor lazy resolution, almost like he got bored of thinking), and definitely has the authorial chops to get his story across. A large part of his prose (very like Marquez and Allende, it seems to be a literary cousin to the Spanish Flu in its sheer infectiousness) consists of flowery metaphor. These are brilliant, it is obvious that he has thought them through but they are excessive- every sentence, every line, every inch of space is filled to the brim with metaphor. For example - "I was unable to reply" or "Stunned into silence" in the worthy hands of Zafon mutates into "Unable to give any shape to the torrent of denials and curses piling up behind my lips". Afternoons arrive like "blood floating on water". Barcelona is compared at every single point to a cemetery - words like dark, skeleton, blood, bones and cemetery itself are all used. It is also referred to repetitively as City of the Damned, a veritable hell on Earth. Vicky and Christina would probably disagree (or would they? Hmmmm...). The very credulity of relations between the characters is strained. Isabella (being one of my favorite characters in the book) actually serves no major function other than to irritate Martin, serve as his sounding board and cook for him (yes, this book fails the Bechdel test on almost every count). Her feelings for Martin and ambivalence about her feelings for Sempere's son are perhaps hinted at but are never fully explored. She is well written but wasted. The other female character in the book, Cristina is, to put it mildly a complete waste of space.She is mentioned and interacted with in the beginning after which Zafon just lets her wilt off stage only to bring her back in the third act. By this time we lose all sympathy (mild to begin with ) for her character. The same holds true for Pedro Vidal. In my recent review of Shame by Salman Rushdie I was critical about the use of Magical realism to infuse mysticism and magic. It always functions as a tricky plot device. In the House of Spirits by Isabelle Allende, it reduces characters to caricatures more at home in a surrealist film than in the pages of a literary work, stretching conviction to the point where they cease being human or interacting normally with the world. In The Angels Game I think magical realism - while not having a direct effect on all the characters - confused its purpose. Is it a book exploring the psychology of religion, mental illness, death and rebirth or is it - and this is what really gets me - a simple vanilla murder mystery cloaked in the shabby Gothic coat of Barcelona in the 20's? Zafon never once defines his book as what it is meant to become, adding the magical realism more as a traditional ode to Spanish writing than to serve his book in any way. In closing, I would consider The Angels Game a Frankenstein's monster of a book - a bit of a guilty pleasure, a romance, a bit of horror and a bit (very tiny mind you) of religious philosophy doing nothing spectacular with even one genre and coming close to failing in all.Two stars on Five Carlos Ruiz Zafon has made a name for himself writing popular magical realist novels set in the murky Barcelona of the 20's to the 40's. The central themes always revolve around books, their authors and how a book reveals its authors soul. What this book reveals about Zafon is disappointing. David Martin is a struggling writer whom fate has dealt a nasty hand. Abandoned by his mother and following the murder of his father, he is taken under the wing of Pedro Vidal a wealthy heir. He falls in love with Cristina Sagnier but their love isn't meant to be. Embittered, he retreats to a (supposedly) cursed house and receives a commission - To write a religious text which uses the basis of religion to formulate a new way of living for people to follow. This aim is never clearly spelt out. His client is a shadowy, mysterious publisher called Andreas Corelli - he may be a ghost, and as things get more intense, it is obvious that everything is not as it seems. Allow me an aside - No novel conveys the problems faced by the author in rounding off a plot more than The French Lieutenant's Woman. Fowles explains in his wonderful novel that every author acts as a mouthpiece for his characters, they lead him where they want to go. This prompted him to write two endings to the novel, the one he wanted and the one he felt the characters led him to. It was a wonderful, innovative way to communicate with the audience, and truly addressed the art of writing . Zafon subverts this rule. I do not expect two endings to every novel, (that would become derivative in itself) but the characters do not shine and are simply filled into slots - beautiful doomed love (check), evil villain (check), self destructive author (check), hot flirtatious Spanish assistant (Check) decent man in love with said assistant (Check). There is no effort to make these characters distinct or relatable and what's worse is that the entire book is narrated from Daniel's jaundiced point of view - boring at the best of times and throw - the - book - at - the - wall frustrating at the worst. The central conceit of this book (which forms the second part of a trilogy known as The Cemetery of Forgotten Books - the first book The Shadow of the Wind to which this serves as a prequel, of sorts) is an abandoned library - cathedral like - with a multitude of disappearing passages filled with abandoned books. A person entering the cemetery is sworn to secrecy and allowed to take one book. He must, in addition, swear to protect it with his life for as long as he lives. A true bibliophile would be drooling , a central mystery surrounding books and a forgotten library. To manufacture a thrilling story full of secret societies and discovery would have been entertaining but Zafon disappoints. The Cemetery of Books acts as a device to drive the plot forward. If two people or events need to come in contact with each other the Cemetery of Books serves an easy and convenient place to manufacture this interaction. This is evident in The Shadow of the Wind where Julian Carax's book is discovered by a young Daniel Sempere within the Cemetery. The plot device repeats here. Despite these annoying contrivances, there is no doubt that Zafon is an excellent writer, though uncontrolled and feeling the need to hammer his excellence into the reader at every opportunity. Though poorly stage managed, he has an intricate plot in place (with a poor lazy resolution, almost like he got bored of thinking), and definitely has the authorial chops to get his story across. A large part of his prose (very like Marquez and Allende, it seems to be a literary cousin to the Spanish Flu in its sheer infectiousness) consists of flowery metaphor. These are brilliant, it is obvious that he has thought them through but they are excessive- every sentence, every line, every inch of space is filled to the brim with metaphor. For example - "I was unable to reply" or "Stunned into silence" in the worthy hands of Zafon mutates into "Unable to give any shape to the torrent of denials and curses piling up behind my lips". Afternoons arrive like "blood floating on water". Barcelona is compared at every single point to a cemetery - words like dark, skeleton, blood, bones and cemetery itself are all used. It is also referred to repetitively as City of the Damned, a veritable hell on Earth. Vicky and Christina would probably disagree (or would they? Hmmmm...). The very credulity of relations between the characters is strained. Isabella (being one of my favorite characters in the book) actually serves no major function other than to irritate Martin, serve as his sounding board and cook for him (yes, this book fails the Bechdel test on almost every count). Her feelings for Martin and ambivalence about her feelings for Sempere's son are perhaps hinted at but are never fully explored. She is well written but wasted. The other female character in the book, Cristina is, to put it mildly a complete waste of space.She is mentioned and interacted with in the beginning after which Zafon just lets her wilt off stage only to bring her back in the third act. By this time we lose all sympathy (mild to begin with ) for her character. The same holds true for Pedro Vidal. In my recent review of Shame by Salman Rushdie I was critical about the use of Magical realism to infuse mysticism and magic. It always functions as a tricky plot device. In the House of Spirits by Isabelle Allende, it reduces characters to caricatures more at home in a surrealist film than in the pages of a literary work, stretching conviction to the point where they cease being human or interacting normally with the world. In The Angels Game I think magical realism - while not having a direct effect on all the characters - confused its purpose. Is it a book exploring the psychology of religion, mental illness, death and rebirth or is it - and this is what really gets me - a simple vanilla murder mystery cloaked in the shabby Gothic coat of Barcelona in the 20's? Zafon never once defines his book as what it is meant to become, adding the magical realism more as a traditional ode to Spanish writing than to serve his book in any way. In closing, I would consider The Angels Game a Frankenstein's monster of a book - a bit of a guilty pleasure, a romance, a bit of horror and a bit (very tiny mind you) of religious philosophy doing nothing spectacular with even one genre and coming close to failing in all.Two stars on Five
What do You think about Il Gioco Dell'angelo (2008)?
“The Angel’s Game” is the second book in the “Cemetery of Lost Books” series. If you read the first book, “The Shadow of the Wind”, you’ll recognize several familiar faces, and you’ll figure out the second book is a prequel set in Barcelona. This book takes a course of its own following the developing career of a pulp fiction writer named David Martin. The story touches on themes including David’s coming-of-age, love, betrayal, mystery, and there is a sense of evil/darkness, which same refer to as gothic.I enjoyed the coming-of-age aspect of the story following David’s writing career, and his struggles to get by in life as well as his struggles with love. The later became an important element as the story progressed. On the other hand, the mystery element and the evil/dark/gothic side didn’t work well for me. The author introduces a character named Anthony Corelli, and leaves him shrouded in ambiguity. I was completely sure sure of his origins and motives throughout the book, and I felt his actions were not true-to-form through the story (i.e., he seems completely evil at times, but at other times he seems a bit mysterious to the point of being benign).The ending of the book did not work well for me. I felt there were too many loose ends, and this is where the Corelli character really fell apart for me in regards to his actions and motivations. While the ending wasn’t that great, I did enjoy the writing style, and the way he describes people and events. THis is one thing that kept me reading, and the bright spot in this otherwise dark and complex plot.
—Ams0527
Siempre me va a gustar la forma de narrar de Ruiz Zafon. Al igual que la sombra del viento, el juego del ángel es un gran libro, donde los hechos ocurren antes que la sombra del viento, cronológicamente hablando. Se destaca un poco más la ciencia ficción (o paranormal, como quieran verlo) en este libro. Se explican algunos detalles de la sombra del viento (no digo más). ¡Simplemente un libro Excelente!
—lupita
What an amazing story teller Carlos Zafon is!!! I never want to put his books down!
—kirby
Liked it but fell short of "the Shadow of the Wind" for me
—yolo
