Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Review:
This book is gorgeous, it's a story of Barcelona during the early days of the 1900s. With such wonderous translations from the original Spanish, the translated copy provided me with a dreamy atmosphere as I journey through this book. The start, a retelling of the youth of the main character, recounted the lack of memory of his mother. The father then took the child to the cemetery of forgotten books, the start of this creative fiction. Reading this book was similar to me walking down Valencia a few years back. It was 11pm at night, where the roads of Valencia were twisting and turns in the classical parts of the city. Everything was real, the beauty of the Spanish night in the local streets, with the sounds, the commotion, and yet, the mysteries.
To produce magic without incantation, to conjure worlds without sigils, to mystify without gesture.
This book reads like a thriller novel, but dreamy, the hangover fog, and hazy. It's gorgeous for sure, but much like this review, a bit convoluted. It's broken into the perspective of a few characters and meant for those who love prose. This novel reminded me of my journey and has given me many new proses to study. Read this if you like the way Proust wrote, dreamy, dreamy, dreamy.
Reading Stats:
1/3/20 - 1/6/20
Reading Level: Freshmen College
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Quotes and Notes:
“HEARD A REGULAR CUSTOMER SAY that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.”
* “A SECRET’S WORTH DEPENDS ON THE PEOPLE FROM WHOM IT MUST be kept.”
* “Without further ado I left the place, finding my route by the marks I had made on the way in. As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn’t help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.”
* “Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not for the merits of who receives them,” said my father. “Besides, it can’t be returned. Open it.”
* The only use for military service is that it reveals the number of morons in the population,” he would remark. “And that can be discovered in the first two weeks; there’s no need for two years. Army, Marriage, the Church, and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yes, go on, laugh.”
* Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”
* “Let me see. This afternoon, about an hour or an hour and a half ago, a gorgeous young lady came by and asked for you. Your father and yours truly were on the premises, and I can assure you without a shadow of doubt that the girl was no apparition. I could even describe her smell. Lavender, only sweeter. Like a little sugar bun just out of the oven.”
* The female heart is a labyrinth of subtleties, too challenging for the uncouth mind of the male racketeer. If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is to win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.” I clapped solemnly at his discourse. “You’re a poet, Fermín.” “No, I’m with Ortega and I’m a pragmatist. Poetry lies, in its adorable wicked way, and what I say is truer than a slice of bread and tomato.
* The man came up to the counter, his eyes darting around the shop, settling occasionally on mine. His appearance and manner seemed vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t say why. Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fashioned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of an incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in Sunday best.
* The caretaker gave me a guarded look. When he smiled, I noticed he was missing at least four upper teeth.
* "I imagined Julián Carax at my age, holding that image in his hands, perhaps in the shade of the same tree that now sheltered me. I could almost see him smiling confidently, contemplating a future as wide and luminous as that avenue, and for a moment I thought there were no more ghosts there than those of absence and loss, and that the light that smiled on me was borrowed light, real only as long as I could hold it in my eyes, second by second.”
* “Not evil,” Fermín objected. “Moronic, which isn’t quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn’t stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced that he’s doing good, that he’s always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around fucking up, if you’ll excuse the French, anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or, as in the case of Don Federico, his leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.”
* "if you see my father, tell him I'm well. Lie to him."
* Few years separated her from the hospice’s guests. “Listen, isn’t the apprentice a bit young for this sort of work?” she asked. “The truths of life know no age, Sister,” remarked Fermín. The nun nodded and smiled at me sweetly. There was no suspicion in that look, only sadness.“
Reference Links: