I am delighted to write that I started this reading year off on a HUGE high. The Shadow of the Wind was my companion over the New Year break and I absolutely could not put it down.

The Shadow of The Wind

By: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
First Published: 2001
Translated by: Lucia Graves

I love books that bring cities to life in such lucid detail that the rythms of the city become integral to the plot itself. This book does that for Barcelona. Zafon weaves autumn winds around crumbling alleyways, he has us in roaring cafes and quiet bookshops. The city's turbulent past bleeds out through the cracks in its cobblestones- the city, arguably, is the book's main character.

Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona is grieving and themes of loss and ghostly loneliness tug at the protagonist's heels. Nevertheless, the protagonist, Daniel, is immediately likeable as a young bookish boy who gets swept up in the mystery of a lost author. His gradual unravelling of the mysteries of Julian Carax forms the backbone of the book. He is self-deprecating, charming, and flawed in a way that makes him very human.

Other characters include the beautiful but unattainable Clara, a blind girl several years older than Daniel who he reads to,  as well as a mysterious man with a burnt face seen smoking under lamp-posts, a bona-fide femme fatale and the unforgettable Fermin Romero de Torres, a homeless man that Daniel befriends with a dark past and witty way with words.

And on top of this suite of intriguing characters we have a winding helter-skelter of a plot that moves at a breakneck speed, cleverly interspersed with suspensful silences. From its beginning in a Cemetery of Forgotten Books, this story etches a path of mystery and fantastical twists and turns that perform a wonderful ode to classic Victorian literature. Crucially, however, the characters' groundings in human motivation and emotion prevents the plot from becoming farcical.

There are love stories, there is mystery, and above all there is friendship, with a powerful message of turning your back on loneliness, on emptiness and ghostly misery, and choosing a future, and friends, and family.

If I hadn't already made it clear, I thoroughly recommend this.