讀書筆記：'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

原文是西班牙文。 故事開始於1945年的巴塞羅那。 小男生Daniel跟開舊書店的爸爸相依為命。 十歲生日的那天，爸爸帶他去一個神秘的地方。 且看作者描述巴塞羅那霧中的街景：

Night watchmen still lingered in the misty streets when we stepped out of the front door. The lamps along the Ramblas marked out an avenue in the early morning haze as the city awoke, like a watercolour slowly coming to life. When we reached Calle Arco del Teatro, we continued through its arch toward the Raval quarter, entering a vault of blue haze. I followed my father through that narrow lane, more of a scar than a street, until the glimmer of the Ramblas faded behind us. The brightness of dawn filtered down from balconies and cornices in streaks of slanting light that dissolved before touching the ground. At last my father stopped in front of a large door of carved wood, blackened by time and humidity. Before us loomed what to my eyes seemed the carcass of a palace, a place of echoes and shadows.

真是充滿詩意和畫麵感的句子。 而我也被帶入這薄霧纏繞、迷離晦澀的曲折巷弄中，隨著Daniel父子穿梭於巴塞羅那街頭。 剛剛結束了西班牙內戰，巴塞羅那全不似我印象中的陽光燦爛，黎明霧氣中充斥著回音和陰影，看起來有點老舊，有點頹廢，吐露著憂傷和憔悴，但雕梁畫棟仍然透出昔日的輝煌。

這個神秘的地方叫“cemetery of forgotten books”, 聚集著各種絕版書。 Daniel選了“The Shadow of the Wind”一書，一讀就入了迷！ 他開始追尋作者，卻發現作者所有的小說都被搜購銷毀。 Daniel於是像偵探一樣追索這件奇案，而自己的成長也開始跟書中人有驚奇的重疊。。。

剛開始讀的時候，我傾倒於作者優美的文筆，恨不得整段地給他highlight.  慢慢展開來，這本書其實情節蠻老套的，有著gothic典型的元素－－荒廢的豪宅，絕望的愛情、驚悚的魔魅、家族的秘密、偵探的冒險。。。愛恨情仇，相當狗血，而且書本翻到三分之二時候已經能猜到結局了，500多頁實在太冗長。

最大的硬傷是Daniel的偵探方式實在很弱智。 基本上，每次他找人問話，對方就和盤托出，言無不盡，再找下一個人，就更多線索。。。這個過程也太lucky，太容易了吧？ 作為偵探小說，沒有一點挑戰的過程，實在有點侮辱讀者的智商。

人物也刻畫得單一平麵。 兩個主角都懦弱狗血，不太招人喜歡啊，特別是那個Carax，跑路逃去巴黎，花著好友的錢，也沒見他回來找愛人啊（還不是怕死！）。 還有男女主角的愛情也有些莫名其妙，還沒什麽發生就突然愛得死去活來，跟瓊瑤阿姨有的拚。 雖然對情節有些失望，我還是蠻享受閱讀此書，特別是書中當年巴塞羅那的氛圍，作者優美的文筆帶我進入一個奇妙的世界－－那種沉浸其中的歡喜，就是讀書人愛書最大的原因吧。

Quotes:

Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart.

I believed, with the innocence of those who can still count their age on their fingers, that if I closed my eyes and spoke to her, she would be able to hear me wherever I was. 

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

Death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand...like a hellish lottery ticket. But I couldn't absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned with hatred.

Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art. 

“That day was turning out to be longer than The Brothers Karamazov.” 

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.

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not for the merits of who receives them.

Television...is the Antichrist...our world will not die as a result of the bomb...it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything.

People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come for parrots.

God, in His infinite wisdom, and perhaps overwhelmed by the avalanche of requests from so many tormented souls, did not answer.

Silencing their hearts and their souls to the point where...they forgot the words with which to express their real feelings.

The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.

Sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.

Destiny is usually just around the corner. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.

Just an innocent boy who thought he had conquered the world in an hour but didn't yet realize that he could lose it again in an instant.

Keep your dreams. You never know when you might need them.

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.

Waiting is the rust of the soul.

Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.

While you're working you don't have to look life in the eye.

Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.

Time goes faster the more hollow it is.

The world war, which had polluted the entire globe with a stench of corpses that would never go away.

A story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things he would be unable to discover otherwise.

The art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.

超喜歡巴塞羅那啊。