The Book About Loving Books

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Pages: 487 Genre: historical fiction

Rating: 3.5 Star

Kindle Highlights

It's 1945 in Barcelona, a city healing from war. Daniel is 10 years old and still grieving from his mother's death when his father takes him to a rare bookstore where he finds "The Shadow of the Wind" by Julián Carax. Daniel finds comfort in Carax's book, but when he goes to search for more of the author's work, he is shocked to learn of a mysterious man going around and burning every last copy of Carax's novels. As he is determined to learn more about Carax, Daniel discovers that this story may be bigger than he previously thought.

I enjoyed the main plot of this book, but it felt so long. It wasn't particularly boring or even that long, it just took forever. There were a few places where it dragged, but generally, the book just wasn't in a hurry. Is that a bad thing? Not particularly, but it's something readers should be aware of.

My only true big complaint with this book was how misogynistic it was. Women were either sex dolls or mothers or dead, and most of the men — primarily Daniel's best friend, who gets a lot of screen time — were not afraid to share their blatantly sexist takes. Also, there was one woman who I think the author wanted me to see as a bad person, but her only crime was not being sexually or romantically interested in the main character (which is totally justified since he's ten years younger than her and they meet when he is 10). This is sort of just a fact you have to accept about the book. It's not a section you can skip because it's really baked into the whole thing. So that's really unfortunate.

That aside, there were still things I liked about the book. Although he was getting some really horrible advice, I liked Daniel. He was a strong protagonist, and I found it easy to root for him and get emotionally invested in his wellbeing. I also liked Julián. I don't know if I'd call him a main character, but as most of the story was centered around him and his life, I thought he was also a strong protagonist. Seeing their twin stories unfold was fun, and they paralleled each other well.

I also liked the writing style. It was highly stylized, so I get why some people wouldn't enjoy it, but I liked it. And while the story may have dragged at some points (again, I think this was somehow the longest book of all time), I was really engaged the whole time. Despite the large cast of characters, I found it generally easy to keep up with everyone. The main characters, anyway. And while I don't think this book is a good mystery, nor is it trying to me, I still found the twists effectively written and executed.

Overall, this book was fine. I'm glad I read it, because it was a sweet story that was clearly written by a lover of a books, which I appreciate. But it's certainly not my favorite book ever.