The Shadow of the Wind

At the peak of the story unfold at about three fourth of the book, the key twist was disclosed and smashed down my former assumption of how it supposes to be. That moment solely (at least to me) shows how successfully Carlos did with TSOTW’s plot.

TSOTW has a medium complicated plot with a web of pretty-many characters which makes it hard enough to keep track of the relationship between one character and another and with its versions of the past and the present. I drew a relationship map myself to track the development of the story. Also, since the subject of the book is Daniel’s journey digging up the history of a dead person, the storyline keeps fluctuating back and forth between pre and post-Barcelona’s Civil War (1936) and it involves many lies and intrigues of characters with different motives. However, TSOTW’s plot is concise and clean in a way that each section of the book involves a rememberable number of characters, just enough to add some light to the unknown history of the dead.

The book is engaging and thrilling through romantic relationships as its ultimate causes of conflicts and tragedies. It took my tears. However, I would say it is not the lovey-dovey kinds of adolescent love; the whole story is all about the loves of mature men and women, pure loves, very real. It is heartbreaking seeing the tension of love and hate in people who were once intimate friends, later killed each other for one’s own needs. Instead of individual greed of taking all, endless struggles and exhausting escapes are beautiful in the characters’ selflessness and self-sacrifice. In one word, my tears fell for altruistic deaths, many deaths for love, for friends.

2 quotes I love (there are many more in the book):

 

“Someone said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you’ve already stopped loving that person forever.”

 

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”