The more this guy writes the better.
The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Doubleday. Fiction. Hardcover. ISBN: 0385528701. $26.95. By clicking the above book image and purchasing a copy you will support the DA, as well as Zafon. Too low?
Every reader who is fortunate enough to have read The Three Musketeers knows how exciting a title like the one above would be if it were true. Dumas wrote stories that fully consume the reader, even when reading at the end of a long day, when dog tired and in bed, somehow the book keeps tired eyes open and formerly fatigued fingers turning page after page. You were all set to read one chapter and grab some shut eye and next thing you know thirty pages have gone by.
Dutifully you close the book. Falling asleep isn’t as easy now, as your mind is still wandering in the author’s fictional universe. That and the fact that you are deeply disturbed by what you just read.
Well the statement above is true. We have, more or less, a new Dumas.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon will be read for generations. His historical Barcelona is comparable to the Paris found in Dumas’ The Three Musketeers or the high seas of Raphael Sabatini’s romances. That is not hyperbole. It is simply the case. I am saying that this is fun at its most literary.
Zafon is an anomaly, a throwback really, living in an era of writing that tends to exist at strict polarities of being either “literary” or “popular.” Bookstores and publishers alike are doubly self-conscious of what those titles should mean. The “literary” writer must be serious, innovative in style and if nothing else must handle supposedly “serious” topics. The author of “popular” fiction has only to make sure they align with a popular trend. Legal drama, vampire thrillers and slow love affairs set on beachfront property (with some epistolary component) are examples of such trends.
The Angel’s Game is a prequel (you do not need to read the first in order to read the second) to the international bestselling The Shadow Of The Wind, and though it might behoove you to read the first installment, it really is not required. The Shadow Of The Wind is quite worth the read, being an exceptional book. In fact part of the reason The Angel’s Game is so exciting is that it is a second book. Sophomore efforts are not always banner affairs and yet after reading it you will quickly realize that Zafon will be able to write more still.
The story takes place at the turn of the 19th century and during the build up to the Spanish Civil War. The young protagonist is David Martin, a boy whose love for literature is without bounds and whose luck seems to only be capable of either being wholly good or completely awful. Time and dedication will bring young Martin to his desired profession: that of writer.
Problem. David’s patron and close friend, one Pedro Vidal, may not be doing everything in the young man’s best interests. Problem. David has been locked into a ten-year contract with a disreputable publishing firm to write “penny dreadfuls” under the wonderful name of Ignatius B. Samson. Problem. His first work – the first novel written from his heart is cruelly overshadowed by his mentor’s, lets say less than authentic masterpiece. Solution. A mysterious stranger claiming to be a publisher offers to make real David’s wildest dreams (and cruelest fantasies) if he will spend one year writing a book for him.
The man merely wants David to write a religious text. A bible, if you will, in which the increasingly mysterious stranger plays the part of god.
Things get bloody fast.
The power of The Angel’s Game does not exist in its engrossing plot (and it is). Instead it lies in the clean, almost perfect writing of the author. Barcelona comes alive and these fictional characters truly inhabit your mind while under the book’s thrall. Like he did in The Shadow Of The Wind, Zafon crafts a page-turner of a most serious comportment.
His are stories for the grandkids to read someday.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment