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laila 's review for:
The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Two stars for the sake of the good translation; it gave us a book that can be read as if it was originally written in English.
I wanted to like the novel but I couldn't, the sub-plots, the characters, the unraveling of the mystery, the parallels between two lives that cross each other, are not original to this novel. There's a copy of everything in other books and other media.
To write a book, that its most elements have been written about, requires a high amount of passion which this book lacks, maybe it was lost in translation.
Another thing that is needed is a precise execution that leaves no faults, this was not the case, the dialogue is just … meh, every two men who have a conversation with Daniel would state their opinion of what women are and what they want, and , as usual, the female characters are the weakest. When it comes to the overall prose it was generally good.
This novel felt like a house that dazzle you at first sight then you take a tour and start to notice the small things, the patterns of the wall paper don’t align properly, the grout lines are not uniform, the lighting is odd, and so on.
I think if I read this book when I was a teenager, I would’ve liked it but at this age and with book popularity and high expectation the book only delivered disappointment. I did not relate to any thing on a personal level with this novel, which is a first!
I wanted to like the novel but I couldn't, the sub-plots, the characters, the unraveling of the mystery, the parallels between two lives that cross each other, are not original to this novel. There's a copy of everything in other books and other media.
To write a book, that its most elements have been written about, requires a high amount of passion which this book lacks, maybe it was lost in translation.
Another thing that is needed is a precise execution that leaves no faults, this was not the case, the dialogue is just … meh, every two men who have a conversation with Daniel would state their opinion of what women are and what they want, and , as usual, the female characters are the weakest. When it comes to the overall prose it was generally good.
This novel felt like a house that dazzle you at first sight then you take a tour and start to notice the small things, the patterns of the wall paper don’t align properly, the grout lines are not uniform, the lighting is odd, and so on.
I think if I read this book when I was a teenager, I would’ve liked it but at this age and with book popularity and high expectation the book only delivered disappointment. I did not relate to any thing on a personal level with this novel, which is a first!