The Cemetery of Forgotten Books

I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. It was the early summer of 1945, and we walked through the streets of Barcelona trapped beneath the ashen skies as dawn poured over Rambla de Santa Monica in a wreath of liquid copper.

            “Daniel, you musn’t tell anyone what you are about to see today,” my father warned. “Not even your friend Tomas. No one.”

            “Not even Mommy?”

            My father sighed, hiding behind the sad smile that followed him like a shadow through life.

            “Of course you can tell her,” he answered, heavyhearted. “We keep no secrets from her. You can tell her everything.”

            Shortly after the Civil War, an outbreak of cholera had taken my mother away. We buried her in Montjuic on my fourth birthday. I can only recall that it rained all day and night, and that when I asked my father whether heaven was crying, he couldn’t bring himself to reply. Six years later my mother’s absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words.

From, The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

           

            One of the greatest names of any place in any novel is Zafon’s “Cemetery of Forgotten Books.” What images that name summons. It is of course the name of a used book store where ancient and lost and out of print books are rescued and given another chance to find welcome in some book lover’s personal library.

            The Shadow of the Wind is about a young boy, Daniel Sempere, whose father, himself a bookshop owner, takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books on his tenth birthday to pick out whatever book he chooses. Daniel’s selection takes him then on a journey of remarkable experiences centered on the book and its author.

He encounters sleazy and shadowy figures, thieves and criminals, downtrodden and abused victims, and beautiful but out of his reach women who break his heart and teach him that life is often not fair.

He learns that brutal, tyrannical people have no appreciation for books. Their learning is all underhanded and driven by selfish motives.

Zafon’s novel was an international bestseller and remains popular since it was first published in 2001.

A Defender of Loners and Misfits

“A mile above Oz, the Witch balanced on the wind’s forward edge, as if she were a green fleck of the land itself, flung up and sent wheeling away by the turbulent air. White and purple summer thunderheads mounded around her. Below, the Yellow Brick Road looped back on itself, like a relaxed noose. Though winter storms and the crowbars of agitators had torn up the road, still it led, relentlessly, to the Emerald City. The Witch could see the companions trudging alone, maneuvering around the buckled sections, skirting trenches, skipping when the way was clear. They seemed oblivious of their fate. But it was not up to the Witch to enlighten them.

            She used the broom as a sort of balustrade, stepping down from the sky like one of her flying monkeys. She finished up on the topmost bough of a black willow tree. Beneath, hidden by the fronds, her prey had paused to take their rest. The Witch tucked her broom under her arm. Crablike and quiet, she scuttled down a little at a time, until she was a mere twenty feet above them. Wind moved the dangling tendrils of the tree. The Witch stared and listened.”

From, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire

Maguire’s brilliant imagining of the life of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, before the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Dorothy is told, has become itself a classic novel and phenomenal musical.

This is a book for adults. Its themes and language are for those who welcome imagination and are open to reading something completely different about a subject as familiar and prized as Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz.

There are many familiar characters in Maguire’s novel but the one who hoists the story into literary history is Elphaba. Green skinned, socially awkward, misunderstood, and mistreated, Elphaba develops a tough exterior and learns to fight for herself. She is a heroine of extraordinary gifts. She longs for tolerance. She champions the rights of animals. She defends loners and misfits, which she knows all too well about. 

This novel has been welcomed by enthusiastic fans of all ages and backgrounds since it was first published in 1995. But what we clearly have here is a book for older girls and young women in the throes of heartbreaking issues: body image, self loathing, defeating inner voices, fears of enormous power, and the urge to simply belong and be accepted without cruel and demoralizing demands from others.

Elphaba rises above these defeating emotions and lives a life, though troubled and attacked, with intrepid courage and a relentless pushing of herself to overcome.

“I don’t cause commotions,” says Elphaba, “I am one.”

This book is right at the top with all of my favorites.