Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

I read this book on my trip to London and definitely enjoyed it. It was a little slow to get into, though this could have been because I was trying to read while David's brother watched TV and his parents talked...

It tells the story of a boy (Daniel) growing up in Barcelona in the 1940s. His father is a bookseller and has instilled in him a love of books. When he is 10 or 11, his father takes him to a place called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where there are copies of thousands of books that people have brought there to keep them safe. He gets to choose one to keep, and it turns out that it is an extremely rare book. The other copies of books by this author have been disappearing, and not much is known about the author's life. As Daniel grows up he starts trying to find out more about the author and the history of the book. What happened to the author is until this point a mystery, and there are some interested parties that want it to stay that way. There's also some romance, though I wouldn't say it's a love story, more of a story with love as a part of it. I found the characters a little hard to keep straight at first, I was wishing there was a character tree in the front of the book and seriously considered writing my own, but it got clearer as I got farther into the book.

It was originally written in Spanish and I think that comes through in parts, there were times when I could feel how lyrical phrases must have sounded in the original. If you're familiar with Barcelona, you'll recognize places he goes in the book. (I think. I recognized a few that I know exist, so I'm assuming that most of the others do as well, I just don't know them.)

So if you like historical fiction, and you like mysteries, I think you would like this book. Now I'm reading Rule of Four, so you'll be hearing about that next. (I know I'm supposed to be reading Gone with the Wind, but they didn't have it at the airport bookstore. I'll get to it, I promise!)