Early in Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind, a young boy named Daniel Sempere is taken to a Borges-like library, where, by complete happenstance, he picks up a novel entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. Immediately, meta-alarms sound. But fear not! Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind turns out to be a fairly conventional thriller/mystery filled with parallel plotlines, shadowy figures, and plenty of melodrama.

The melodrama begins early, with a painfully overwrought description of Daniel's pain over his mother's death. ("'I can't remember her face. I can't remember Mummy's face,' I muttered, breathless.") So does the atrocious writing, of which the most aggravating feature is Zafon's knack for hamhanded similes and metaphors: Daniel's father "flash[es] a mysterious smile probably borrowed from the pages of one of his worn Alexandre Dumas romances"; a friend's stories "sound too good to be true, like the ads for hair-restorer lotions that were plastered over the trams"; etc.

Even the much-vaunted plot--the engine for any thriller--is disappointing. There are two central mysteries in the novel: the history of Julian Carax, the author of the meta-Shadow; and the identity and goals of the weird people harrassing Daniel over his copy of the book. Daniel's initial sleuthing for answers is, I'll admit, highly entertaining, as he's chased hither and thither by dark men smoking cigarettes on rainy street corners. (Seriously.)

Then everything becomes a soap opera--a bad soap opera, even more overwrought than is typical for the genre. There was a quasi-"Luke I am your father" moment late in the novel that made me realize just how ridiculous the plot had become, and I just sort of stopped caring afterward. And even before that moment there were plenty of plot points that just didn't appeal to me: for instance, Fermin and Daniel's scheme to bring a prostitute to a beggar in a convent. It didn't help that Zafon occasionally info-dumped in order to make some sense of all the crazy stuff that's been happening: the exposition is a welcome resolution to dangling plot threads, but it also saps the savor from the mystery.

The characters are also a mixed bag. I suppose it's too much to expect living, breathing humans in what is arguably nothing more than a potboiler, but just about everybody in The Shadow of the Wind felt like a cartoon, all external tics and dark histories and no soul. None of this would have mattered if the story were gripping (otherwise, The Da Vinci Code would have flopped), but when the plot begins to creak, you need characters more interesting than these to make the journey interesting.

One thing about this book that I did consistently enjoy was its use of Barcelona as a setting. I was actually in Barcelona when I read the book, and I have to say that it does a great job of portraying just how much downtown Barcelona is a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. The history of Barcelona also receives star billing, and I wish that I had read the book before, for instance, I visited Montjuic castle, which has an interesting history. Otherwise, though, The Shadow of the Wind was only fitfully amusing.

[James has also reviewed the book. His verdict: "Reasonable read, not a classic."]

Copyright © 2006 Steven Wu