The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I’m not quite sure what I just read. I ordered the book from the library based on a praiseworthy review somewhere and thought it worth a chance. The book turned out to be around 550 pages; a bit longer than I’m used to. Only author I like that holds my attention for that long is Robert McCammon (who has a new title coming out in October, Mr. Slaughter – stay tuned). Most books I read are about a story, a mystery, a mission.

This was about the life of Daniel Martin and about books, set in Barcelona just after some Spanish war in the pre WWI years. Daniel’s father comes home a changed man and his mother takes off leaving Daniel and father to struggle on their own. When Daniel was 14, his father was gunned down by street thugs, who we find out later was the original target and the guilt of the original target permeates the story. Daniel seeks shelter in the hidden recesses of a Barcelona daily newspaper. One writer (of some substantial means) takes Daniel under his wing as a private sort of go-fer. As Daniel grows up, his mentor suggests to the editor that the boy has some writing talent and deserves some space. He is given the back page of the Sunday edition to write fantasy tales of Barcelona’s dark side that become a hit with the public. The editor puts Daniel in touch with some shady publishers who get him to continue writing similar books under a pen name, on a 10-yr exclusive contract.

Flush with money from the books success, Daniel rents a vacant Tower House where he can look ever the city, feel its tales, and squeeze the stories out of his brain. A benefactor writes Daniel offering him an obscene amount of money to write a book that will change the hearts and minds of all who read it. At first he is hesitant, but takes the job anyway. His only contact with the benefactor is by letters and the occasional meeting filled with philosophical give and take.

Meanwhile, his mentor at the newspaper has decided to marry a much younger woman who grew up with Daniel and is the only woman Daniel really cares for. In addition, he becomes close to a bookseller and through the bookseller, he takes on a female apprentice writer to be his assistant who moves in with him. She continually challenges him when he veers of the noble path of a writer of stories.

We follow Daniel as he struggles with the book, the love-hate relationship with his apprentice, his longing for his lost love, and the mysterious benefactor. As he continues to progress on the book, he begins to descend slowly into a madness surrounding the history of the Tower House. Its previous owner was a lawyer who was involved with shady dealings and disreputable people.

One evening, Daniel is bemoaning his contract with the publisher during a visit with his benefactor who promises that the contract will be settled to Daniel’s liking. The next day, the 2 publishers are burned to death and Michael is the prime suspect of a detective and his 2 muscle-bound partners each itching to beat a confession out of Daniel.

As Daniel’s slowly encroaching madness becomes more engrossing, the bodies start to pile up, but none are due to his hand. He wonders if all the deaths are somehow related to his benefactor. We begin to wonder if he hasn’t made a deal with the devil.

Out of the blue, his childhood sweetheart contacts him saying she will leave her husband so she and Daniel can run off to Paris. But she is gone when he comes back from buying train tickets and he tracks her to a sanitarium where she has been admitted where he helps nurse her back to some semblance of normality, at least until she walks off on the lake ice, falls in, and drowns under his vain attempts to break the ice and save her.

The police get back into the picture, pressing him on the woman’s disappearance, but after significant interrogation and threats and circumstances, Daniel ends up killing all 3 cops, then runs out on Barcelona never to return.

Maybe 10 years later, (he is now around 40), His benefactor shows up (not having aged a day) where Daniel is living in a beach hut on the coast of somewhere, bringing a young child, a child who turns out be that love of his life returned to him now as the child he grew up with for him to raise, to love, to marry, to care for, until she dies of old age. But Michael will not age.

See what I mean? What did I just read? There must be some overarching theme of lost love found again, making deals with the devil, supernatural mystery, or what else all intertwined in an elaborate Gothic tale. Shifting time and characters through time add to the allure of the story. An interesting sidelight, but a critical story item, is a place called "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books" where Daniel finds a book that offers interesting and bizarre details of the mystical book he is writing, of the previous owner of the house, and so much more I can't even recall.

Other reviews say this story relates aspects of Spanish history, but I’ll have to take their word for that. I will say that the writing was outstanding despite the dozens of speaking parts, the complexity of interconnected plots, and it held my interest all the way through, despite it’s length. This is an eloquently written book that should capture the imagination of anyone who decides to make the effort to escape today and fully visualize 1900’s Barcelona and all levels of its society. Looking for something different in the way of a story? This is certainly different, and definetly worth a try. But when you are done, tell me what you read. I’d be curious.

East Coast Don

WC Don offers a favorite line occasionally. Here is one I kind of liked: Envy is the religion of the mediocre. That sort of philosophical pedagogy surfaces all over the book, especially when the benefactor and Michael are dueling.