Marina, The Shadow Of The Wind, The Angel's Game & The Prince Of Mist (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
The soul of books. On Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Angel’s Game. Barcelona. For almost a 100 years, it has been Antonio Gaudi and the Sagrada Familia. But more recently, also Carlos Ruiz Zafon, the Spanish bestselling author and his books on books. Zafon envisaged four novels that would be part of a fictional universe, with some of the same characters you meet at different points in their lives. A Harry Potter world for adults. A box of stories with four doors to enter “a labyrinth of fictions that could be explored in many directions”. The central axis is the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in Barcelona, the city where Zafon was born and which he knows like the back of his hand. The first book, The Shadow of the Wind , he called “the nice, good girl in the family”, its prequel, the Angel’s Game “the wicked Gothic stepsister. It’s a book designed to step into the storytelling process and become part of it. In other words, the wicked, Gothic chick wants your blood”. (1)And so, from almost the first page, you’re drawn into this magical world of Barcelona in the twenties. Where a young boy, David Martin, is growing up. Son to an abusive father, who cannot understand his love for books, and a mother who leaves her family when he’s still very young. He finds love and understanding with Sempere, the old bookshop keeper, who becomes a kind of second father to him and who gives him one of the most precious gifts of his life: an old copy of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. From then on, he has only one ambition: to become a writer. A few years later, he is writing a series of Gothic novels, under a pseudonym. And then is approached by a French publisher, Andreas Corelli, who has an assignment for him: he is to write a book that will change the hearts and minds of people who read it. In return for, amongst other things, a lot of money. As David embarks upon the project, strange things begin to happen and – as a reader – you are swept away by the sheer mastery of Zafon’s storytelling skills. A thriller, suffused with a Gothic sauce of crumbling architecture, haunted mansions with creaking doors, mysterious deaths, ghosts, the mist enveloping the back allies of the city. Barcelona becomes alive and reading a Zafon book always makes me want to go and visit this place, for his books are so much more attractive and exciting than a tourist brochure. But as the irony is so abundant at times, you cannot help but feel, there’s much more to it than just an adventure story. For Zafon is a European author and – like so many of them – still struggling with what World War II did to our hearts and minds. And then, there was also the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime afterwards. Fascism, and certainly Nazism, explore the same eternal stories as religion does: good or bad, a hero/a villain/and the victim who, precisely because he feels victimized by external forces, needs to believe. "Nothing makes us believe more than fear,(…). When we feel like victims, all our actions and beliefs are legitimized, however questionable they may be. Our opponents, or simply our neighbors, stop sharing common ground with us and become our enemies. We stop being aggressors and become defenders. (…) The first step for believing passionately is fear. Fear of losing our identity, our life, our status, our beliefs. Fear is the gunpowder and hatred is the fuse. Dogma, the final ingredient, is only a lighted match." (…) “It's much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us uncomfortable. It doesn't have to be an individual character. It can be a nation, a race, a group . . . anything." (2) Zafon asks the question so many of us have asked over here for the last sixty-seventy years: how was this horror possible? Who’s responsible for these wicked ideologies which can set the world on fire and destroy everything? God or Man? Angel or Devil? The madness of the artist or the fears and weaknesses of ‘normal’ people, like us? To me, one of the reasons the Angel’s Game had to be written was for it to become an antidote to these destructive ideologies and fanatical religions. For it can generate new universes, even second chances . It’s also a unifying force – just like religion and ideology – for as a reader we are asked to ‘step into the process and become part of it’. But it’s a constructive, creative process. One that does not offer certainties while at the same time, leaves us with many ‘truths’. But it’s also a book on the old theme of Faust: would we sell our soul for things like health, the promise of happiness, money and fame? Or in the end, just to escape fear? How far would we, as individuals, go for – what is a recurrent theme in the book – ‘Great Expectations’ - the fulfilment of our dreams, illusions and passions ? Is salvation and damnation all inside ourselves or is fate always hovering above us, playing games with our lives? As a reader, we are challenged to find those ‘truths’ at different levels. And in doing so, have become part of the soul of the book. For “every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and dream about it”. (2) That is also a reason why it had to be written. In any case, I did not bury this book in “the Cemetery of Forgotten Books”. It had a profound influence on me and two consequences. Not only am I dying to visit Barcelona one day, but also I’d love to enter another of those ‘doors’ and get lost in the Zafon labyrinth once more. So, up to number three: The prisoner of Heaven. (1) Quote from Carlos Ruiz Zafon ‘On the Angel’s Game’(2) Quotes from ‘The Angel’s Game’ I'm a fan of Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Although I didn't think that Angel's Game matched the heights of The Shadow of the Wind, it was still a good read. And in The Prince Of Mist one can see how the author's style as developed.The story is well-developed, if aimed at a slightly younger audience, and the atmosphere that Zafon creates so well in all of his books, and possibly his strongest point, is here in abundance. If there is a criticism to be made it is that some of the language, often surrounding sibling bickering (the sentiment of which is carried off very well) is a little twee, at times cliched. This has to be considered in the context of a debut novel, however.
What do You think about Marina, The Shadow Of The Wind, The Angel's Game & The Prince Of Mist (2011)?
The whole collection is written so people fall in love with Zafon's writing. He's brilliant.
—sssantos
I never read a book twice...but I have with these books!! And would read them again!!
—thathussery
i like Zafon very much, the shadow of the wind is very good
—darksoul
