读书笔记：'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。 故事开始于1945年的巴塞罗那。 小男生Daniel跟开旧书店的爸爸相依为命。 十岁生日的那天，爸爸带他去一个神秘的地方。 且看作者描述巴塞罗那雾中的街景：

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.

真是充满诗意和画面感的句子。 而我也被带入这薄雾缠绕、迷离晦涩的曲折巷弄中，随着Daniel父子穿梭于巴塞罗那街头。 刚刚结束了西班牙内战，巴塞罗那全不似我印象中的阳光灿烂，黎明雾气中充斥着回音和阴影，看起来有点老旧，有点颓废，吐露着忧伤和憔悴，但雕梁画栋仍然透出昔日的辉煌。

这个神秘的地方叫“cemetery of forgotten books”, 聚集着各种绝版书。 Daniel选了“The Shadow of the Wind”一书，一读就入了迷！ 他开始追寻作者，却发现作者所有的小说都被搜购销毁。 Daniel于是像侦探一样追索这件奇案，而自己的成长也开始跟书中人有惊奇的重叠。。。

刚开始读的时候，我倾倒于作者优美的文笔，恨不得整段地给他highlight.  慢慢展开来，这本书其实情节蛮老套的，有着gothic典型的元素－－荒废的豪宅，绝望的爱情、惊悚的魔魅、家族的秘密、侦探的冒险。。。爱恨情仇，相当狗血，而且书本翻到三分之二时候已经能猜到结局了，500多页实在太冗長。

最大的硬伤是Daniel的侦探方式实在很弱智。 基本上，每次他找人问话，对方就和盘托出，言无不尽，再找下一个人，就更多线索。。。这个过程也太lucky，太容易了吧？ 作为侦探小说，没有一点挑战的过程，实在有点侮辱读者的智商。

人物也刻画得单一平面。 两个主角都懦弱狗血，不太招人喜欢啊，特别是那个Carax，跑路逃去巴黎，花着好友的钱，也没见他回来找爱人啊（还不是怕死！）。 还有男女主角的爱情也有些莫名其妙，还没什么发生就突然爱得死去活来，跟琼瑶阿姨有的拼。 虽然对情节有些失望，我还是蛮享受阅读此书，特别是书中当年巴塞罗那的氛围，作者优美的文笔带我进入一个奇妙的世界－－那种沉浸其中的欢喜，就是读书人爱书最大的原因吧。

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.

超喜欢巴塞罗那啊。