September 8, 2005 – Summer Reading “Shadow of the Wind”

September 8, 2005 – Summer Reading “Shadow of the Wind”

I finished a good book this summer entitled “Shadow of the Wind,” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, a novelist born in Barcelona in 1964 whose novel begins in the Barcelona of 1945. The main character, 10-year old Daniel Sempere, born a few years before the start of the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) is on his way with his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, the repose of books that have gone wanting for readers. Daniel’s father, a bookstore owner, tells his son never to mention the secret place to anyone. Once there, the senior Sempere introduces his son to Isaac, the owner, and tells his son to find one book that he would like to have as his own. Through the labyrinthine maze of bookshelves the boy wanders until a book catches his eye and he knows that he must possess it. The book is entitled “The Shadow of the Wind,” by Julian Carax; a Spaniard who published most of his works in Paris, though the works were later published in Spain by a Barcelona publisher named Toni Cabestani.

The story goes on to involve a friend of the older Sempere, Gustavo Barcelo, another far wealthier bookseller, who offers to buy the book from the younger Sempere. It seems there are no copies of any Carax novel to be had anywhere in Barcelona, making this work prized. When Daniel refuses to sell the work, Barcelo befriends the young man and introduces him to his blind daughter Clara nearly twice Daniel’s age. She has read several of Carax’s novels except “Shadow of the Wind,” which Daniel offers to read to her. The two become friends and Daniel begins to wonder why Carax’s novels are nowhere to be found. His curiosity is aroused all the more when he’s visited by a man with a disfigured face claiming to be Lian Coubert, a character from Carax’s novel “Shadow of the Wind”. He too wants the Carax novel but his intention is to burn the work as he has done with all the other copies he’s been able to locate. Frightened, the young Sempere returns the book to Isaac for safekeeping.

At about the same time, the younger Sempere, now 16 years old, befriends a street person with the unlikely name of Fermin Romero de Torres, an ex-soldier with a past that has exiled him to the streets of Barcelona. The senior Sempere needs help in the bookstore and Fermin Romero de Torres fits the bill. Once cleaned up and taken first into the Sempere home above the bookstore then installed in a Pension nearby. Fermin Romero de Torres, with his prominent nose, and lanky physique, is a long winded, pompous but loveable rogue who becomes an asset to the store with his knowledge of books and his ability to acquire books store patrons want but not available in the store. This second ability is what helps the younger Sempere satisfy his curiosity about the mysterious author Julian Carax.

Fermin Romero de Torres bears more than a slight resemblance to Sancho Panza, as in his childhood innocence does Daniel Sempere resemble his master Don Quixote. And as in Cervantes’ tale of a quest, Zafon too has set his pair upon a journey of discovery meeting all manner of strange and compelling characters along the way. Zafon’s story is a coming of age tale that describes the hardships, both self-inflicted and real that every young person endures as they grow into adulthood. In Zafon’s account, drawn with sympathetic clarity, the reader sees the lives of two young men, Daniel Sempere and Julian Carax, With the discovery of the lost novel, the young Sempere unwittingly sets a sequence of events in motion that he cannot undo. In his pursuit to learn of Julian Carax, the reader watches Julian grow from a boy much like Sempere into a talented but tormented young man.

To learn who Carax really is, Carlos Ruiz Zafon takes the reader on a journey with young Daniel Sempere and the verbose Fermin Romero de Torres as the reader’s guides. We learn of the Aldaya family and their great house named The Angel of Mist at 32 Avenida del Tibidabo: the patriarch, a ruthless businessman named Don Ricardo Aldaya, his son Jorge and daughter Penelope and her governess Jacinto Coronado—bound to her young charge with near obsessive devotion. This wealthy family is connected to the family of Julian Carax, his mother Sophie Carax, a French governess married to his father Antonin Fortuny, the hat maker—Julian chose to use his mother’s name. The connection results from Don Ricardo Aldaya happening into the hat maker’s store and being taken with Julian. At his expense, the businessman enrolls the young boy, who shares Aldaya’s love of books, into San Gabriel the private school his son Jorge attends.

At San Gabriel the reader meets the other major characters of this tale of ultimate destruction and final redemption: Francisco Javier Fumero, the school caretaker’s son and his society aspiring mother Maria (AKA, Yvonne) and Francisco Ramos, the cook’s son—both boys of poor means outcasts among their wealthier schoolmates. The former will become the great villain of this Passion play. Another major character among the boys at San Gabriel’s is Miquel Moliner. He is the son of a wealthy arms manufacturer and a German mother who died three years before young Miquel entered San Gabriel’s, leaving the boy obsessed with death. He develops a deep abiding friendship to Julian. These four became close in school, though Francisco Javier Fumero was the most distant and aloof of them, ultimately attempting to kill Julian only to be thwarted by the quick action of Miquel. Fumero had learned that Penelope Aldaya, the girl he had become obsessed with, was in love with Julian and he with her.

In later years, Nuria Montfort, the daughter of Isaac, proprietor of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, would marry Miquel. Like her husband, she too would become obsessed with Julian. It was she who secreted Carax’s books in her father’s hiding place away from the destructive clutch of Lian Coubert. Daniel would come to know all these characters as he visited them en route to his final discovery.

With his skills as a cold -blooded killer, Fumero the reader, learns and prospers during the Spanish Civil War becoming an agent first for the Republicans and then for the Nationalist. He excels at torture, intimidation and murder—both sanctioned and otherwise. Like the young Daniel Sempere, he too, is looking for the illusive Julian Carax. The reader also learns that Fermin Romero de Torres is no stranger to the sadistic but well known Chief Inspector of Police, Fumero. In fact, the reader learns that de Torres battered body bears the scars of Fumero’s handy work. During the novel, the Chief Inspector toys with both de Torres and the young Sempere as he uses them to find the foremost object of his destructive desire, Carax.

In the course of Zafon’s work, he introduces us to a number of memorable well-drawn ancillary characters. There is the gay watchmaker, Federico Flavia, who enjoys dressing in drag and performing at a local bar. There is Tomas Aguilar, Daniel’s best friend and Tomas’s sister Beatriz. There are the other characters that populate the pages because of their earlier contributions to places in the story. The house on Avenida del Tibidabo was built by a wealthy Catalan Financier Salvador Jauza, who moved in with his wife, a Philadelphia socialite and his mistress a mulatto maid named Marisela, a mysterious ebony beauty who turned heads in the streets of Barcelona. In addition, there is the character Baltasar Deulofeu I Carallot, AKA Laszlo de Vicherny, professional gigolo and con artist. In the mid 19th century, he converted a run down old building into his own place of extreme debauchery called The Tenebrarium, which Zafon take pains to describe in detail. Its mention results from it becoming at the time of the novel the Santa Lucia hospice, where Daniel and Fermin find Jacinto Coronado and learn what she knows of Penelope and Julian.

Zafon’s work made the New York Times Bestseller list and with good reason. It holds its reader right up to the end and rewards his/her patience with a cathartic ending that brings the tale to a satisfying conclusion. It’s an enjoyable work to read.