What I’m Reading: Fowles, Lopez and Zafon

The Collector, by John Fowles

Read from April 04 to 14, 2012

Two Stars

The Collector was a sensation when it was published because it told the story of a very ordinary working class Englishman, Frederick Clegg, a butterfly collector and lowly clerk who is enamored — at a distance — with a beautiful art student. When he wins a fortune from a bet, he gives up his job and buys an isolated country cottage where he devises a plan to collect his beloved, Miranda Grey. Fowles tells his story from the point of view of both characters — the very conventional but terrifying Clegg and the the very mod but terrified Miranda — and the intercutting viewpoints slowly ratchet up the tension and suspense. Taking the reader inside the head of the deranged Clegg was an unusual innovation in the early 1960s, but in 2012 is pretty old hat, and Clegg himself is tame compared to the villains who came later, such as Hannibel Lecter. The book seemed quite dated and characters, even poor Miranda, not really compelling to a contemporary reader, which is the explanation for the two-star “okay” rating.

The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, By Steve Lopez

Read from March 14 to April 04, 2012

Three Stars

A friend gave me this book after I watched the movie, and I was intrigued enough by the situation — a newspaper columnist befriends a homeless man — to want to read the original story. What captured the attention of columnist Lopez was the music Nathaniel Ayers coaxed out of his two-string violin on the streets of Los Angeles. The Soloist tells the story of the “unlikely friendship” that grew between the two men as Lopez searched for the facts in Nathaniel’s back story as a Julliard-trained musician while trying to find a stable and safe setting for the musician in hopes he could regain his mental health. What struck me most strongly about this book was how many good people there are out there in the world trying or willing to try to help people like Nathaniel. Count among them psychiatrists who took an interest in his case, workers at homeless shelters who looked for ways to keep him safe, ordinary people who read Lopez’s columns and came forward to offer help — money, musical instruments, etc., musicians like Yo Yo Ma, and institutions like the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And, of course, Lopez who, with his family, made extraordinary efforts to help Ayers. In the cruel crush of modern living, it’s easy to forget that some people do care about others, and this book serves as a worthwhile reminder of that fact

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Read from March 05 to 15, 2012

Three Stars

For the most part, book blurbs are bunk, but Stephen King is the exception. Here’s what he had to say about The Shadow of the Wind: “Shadow is the real deal, a novel full of cheesy splendor and creaking trapdoors, a novel where even the subplots have subplots.” That was enough to persuade me to open this book, and I was not disappointed. It’s set in post-war Barcelona, and the story begins with a setup that any true bookworm would find compelling. Young Daniel Sempere is taken by his widowed bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, an enormous building full of packed bookshelves that house single copies of books that might otherwise be lost. The boy is charged with selecting one book that he will responsible for protecting, and he chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. The book captivates the boy, who searches out every title he can find by Carax, a task that proves difficult because someone is systematically searching out and destroying all of Carax’s book. As Daniel grows up, he learns more about the mysterious author and in his search meets a variety of interesting people with connections to Carax. The story flashes back from the 1950s Spain of Franco to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, threading the political, economic and literary history of Spain through the story of Daniel’s quest for answers to the secrets of Carax’s life and his own. Zafon’s novel includes several truly memorable characters and vividly evokes Barcelona.