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Rating: Stockholm Syndrome also applies to books: it is possible to fall in love with your captor, in this case, the pages of a book. "The Shadow of the Wind" captures, holds you captive until you finish reading it, until you pay the ransom for liberation. And you even feel sorry to be freed, you want to continue being a prisoner of that magic unleashed by Zafón's words, a magic that hypnotizes you from the first chapter to the last.
The story revolves around young Daniel Sempere, a typical teenager in full identity crisis and amidst a hormonal storm, and a mysterious book that will disrupt the boy's life from the very moment it is "randomly" found by the boy himself. A series of events will unfold in a chain reaction, an unstoppable cascade of happenings that leaves the reader breathless and with a frantic curiosity to know what will happen chapter by chapter, causing a certain difficulty in interrupting the reading and closing the book.
All this is set against the backdrop of Barcelona in the late '40s and early '50s: the Spanish Civil War has just ended, and Francisco Franco has come to power. We are under the pressure of a dictatorship, there is a certain oppressive atmosphere where appearance is what counts and not the substance of people. We are faced with a pretentious society, a society that has nothing of "good" about it ("He who sees sin everywhere is sick in the soul, and to speak frankly, also has intestinal problems. In fact, all Iberian saints suffered from chronic constipation").
Zafón manages to create a mix of genres: from thriller to horror, from adventure to noir, with frequent traces of "romance".
A novel with an intertwined and overwhelming plot that must be read in one breath. A reflection on humanity and the behaviors of the masses, on the destructive and constructive force of love at the same time, and on its most degenerate form: hatred.
Frightening and exhilarating. It definitely takes the reader's breath away.
"There are worse prisons than words".
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