Many people have discovered Carlos Ruiz Zafon by his book The Shadow of the Wind, his first adult narrative that has become a global success. It should be kept in mind that his novel Marina, antecedent to the previously mentioned book, is aimed at a younger audience and, by the same thought, shouldn’t be examined under the same criteria as its descendent.
Marina is narrated by Oscar Drai, an adolescent studying in a boarding school in Barcelona. He spends much of his time daydreaming and wandering around the city in his free time, until one day he discovers a seemingly abandoned residence. Like any other curious young man, he ventures inside only to discover his mistake; it’s inhabited by a young girl, Marina, who cares for her father, Germán Blau, a former artist who never picked up a paintbrush after his wife’s death, and who now suffers from an undisclosed illness.
Marina and Oscar quickly become friends, evidenced by the fact that Marina takes him to the cemetery of Sarriá, “one of the most remote places of Barcelona.” There, she admits to having spent months observing a woman, who always dressed in black, that visits the cemetery on the last Sunday of every month at exactly ten in the morning to leave a single rose on an unmarked grave. When the aforementioned woman appears, Marina and Oscar decide to follow her.
This decision opens the door to a mystery long forgotten over the decades, but that still exists in the form of a black butterfly with outstretched wings. Full of suspense and intrigue, the novel doesn’t leave any opportunity to put it down, it’s quick prose inviting to finish the tale written with a touch of Frankenstein and a bittersweet ending.
Zafon has a particular talent that is shown in his ability to include a character’s past without the reader losing trace of the original story. Plus, the characters’ stories tend to intertwine, each one adding their own piece to the puzzle that Zafon has constructed for his audience. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that adult readers, as well as the adolescents for whom this novel is aimed, will also run the risk of getting lost in its pages.
One of the most common critiques of this novel is that it feels inferior to The Shadow of the Wind. People are mistaken in thinking this way, since novels shouldn’t be compared to previous works of the same author, especially when the audience isn’t the same; both have various elements in common, including themes of love, loss, mystery, injustice, suspense, life, and death, but the execution, much like his audience, is completely different. This doesn’t mean that one is better than the other, it simply means that Zafon has the writing capacity to suit various tastes.
Despite being a quick read, Marina is a great example of how our experiences leave footprints in the soul that can never be erased, even if time never reveals the answers you were looking for. The mix of semi-detective characters with a science fiction story results in a combination worthy of the same acclaim that’s been given to The Shadow of the Wind.
