shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafon

This book hit all the right nerves: murder mystery, historical epic, romance, and tragedy. It’s even got a ghost.

Toxic from work issues, I barely noticed that I was walking on old familiar roads, until the church bells started pealing, and I looked up to see myself walking though girls in shiny satin dresses, all dolled up in groups with friends, streaming out from the church plaza, which sheltered the entrance to the neighbourhood Catholic school.

The colors were vivid, the red on their lips, the pink on their cheek and gown, the black on their hair, curled and coiffed. And the music swept past me, made up of the notes of their chatter, and the rustling of their whispered plans. It was Prom night, which isn’t over with the party in any country. I had almost forgotten how hopeful the youth could be, poised on triumph or disaster, their future.

This was two weeks ago. The memory stood out as I was reading The Shadow of the Wind, a story about loneliness but also about hope and redemption. In those few moments with 16-year olds around me, I realized, I had glimpsed that absolute stillness between now and tomorrow, where everything is possible. As 10-year old Daniel Sempere, son of a bookseller, pulls out a book from the dusty shelves of the Cemetery of Lost Books in Barcelona in 1945, he himself stepped into this magical place. He becomes obsessed about the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax, the author.

But as he got pulled into the quest for Carax, he may also have stepped into a mirror that reflects bliss only for a moment and tears until death. Over the next eight years, he discovers that someone had been systematically burning each copy of Carax’s books. In his search, he found stories within stories that flowed from the lives of those who touched  Carax’s.

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind)

Gothic, melodramatic, cheesy, maybe, the book nevertheless touches me on so many levels. Maybe it is the Spanish in me, that appreciated the passion the characters invested in everything, big and small. In the hours I crammed reading to beat a book club deadline, I was never more invested myself, grateful, knowing I have recaptured that stillness. A book has captured it, and given it back.

Sure, there were inconsistencies in the narrative, but they don’t bother me much. How could a certain sweet something have said she talked to a certain best friend when, supposedly, no one beside her family and maids saw her while she was a prisoner? How could this other woman have known so much about a letter that she had never read nor been told about?

I think that much of life is relative, anyway: lived vicariously, influenced by stories many times removed from the original source, and smothered by a million, million exhalations, turning the moon blue—once in a while.

Would this story have worked if it wasn’t set in post-Spanish Civil War Barcelona? I’m not sure. Take a walk in this remarkable city and tell me.

an artist of the floating world by kazuo ishuguro

Ono refuses to be an artist of the floating world, yet he goes back to being one. As Japan embraces the future, Ono can only sit back and watch while the Old Japan fades away.

‘This book must be the greatest mystery I have ever read’ was my first reaction upon finishing The Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.

That’s because even as I turned the last page, I still didn’t know what the heck the story was about; what the characters were thinking; what the point of all the meandering was.

There was hardly any plot, no climax, no catharsis even. Page after page, I followed the day-to-day life of Masuji Ono, an aging Japanese artist, immediately following his country’s defeat in World War II. Supposedly, I was inside his head, but did he truly know himself?

Anyway, all the while he set about improving his daughter’s value as a wife, he gave me glimpses of his journey as an artist, first as a mass-producer of ‘typical’ Japanese artworks sold to foreign clients, as apprentice to a master artist of the floating world, then as political artist and revolutionary official.

Scenes floated into each other. Flashbacks were flashbacks to more flashbacks. Sometimes, I got confused about which part of his life we were now in. Was he young, trying to finish enough paintings to meet the quota in a tiny attic by oil-light? Or was he at the height of his career, and that of Migi-Hidari, a pleasure district frequented by artists, writers, and thinkers, soaking in the atmosphere, the sake, the sight waitresses in kimonos, and the sound of boisterous conversations? Or was he by his favorite restaurant, a survivor of American bombings amidst the ruins?

At one time, I thought that the artist of the floating world was not Ono but Ishiguro, so fluid did he make the narrative… I was on a raft or a boat floating past watercolor scenes I can never return to or change.

For to be an artist of the floating world is to capture fleeting beauty. In Ono’s world, that beauty is often found in the pleasure districts and geisha houses… Tonight, the lamplight may fall on a woman’s cheek with a golden glow; tomorrow, it may give off a different mood, a more vivacious one compared with the sad loveliness of the other night.

In essence, every night, every hour, every minute is different. To capture beauty is to capture that which is lost forever. To be an artist of the floating world is to be the best kind of hedonist-and artist.

But Ono turned his back on this world to create political art-aka propaganda-that helped fuel Japan’s desire for conquest. He meant well, but when Japan lost the war, Ono faced the shame of being part of that failure.

As Ono rambled and meandered, around him was family turmoil, with his daughters and in-laws despising him and criticizing him; shame and suicide, with colleagues committing suicide as a way to redeem themselves; guilt and denial, because Ono may not be the noble and highly respected artist he believes himself to be; and, finally, sorrow and naiveté, over Japan’s changing world and the Japanese’s ready acceptance of Western modes of thoughts and principles.

As I write my impressions of the book, I realize something: the punchline!

All these insights, from a book in which little was revealed… For instance, Ono’s family was never disrespectful in tone, manner, and language, yet now I realize they were simply humoring him; Ono keeps claiming he did nothing wrong, yet I now see he actually committed numerous betrayals; Japan was supposedly sunk deep in guilt and sadness over the war-yet what was it so gloomy about?-not the atrocities the nation was responsible for in other countries but over the loss of the nation’s face globally.

It took a while (two weeks) for me to get the book, but get it I did. The last insight may even be an inside look of the author’s inward-looking mindset regarding WWII and not just a general picture of the Japanese society psyche (as represented in the book) post war.

Damn, Ishiguro is good! Subtle as hell, but with an impact that catches you unawares.