Global Cool’s resident book worm Emma brings you her favourite reads, inspiring you to ditch the car and the stress of the morning commute and bury your head in a great book on the bus or train instead…
This week our Traincation expert Emily suggested that the Sa Pobla festival in Barcelona was well worth a visit. Whether you were able to go or not, I’ve got a book that will indulge your interests in the Catalan capital or pique a new fascination that may encourage you to make your way there one day in the future.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s ‘The Angel’s Game’ follows the hugely popular ‘The Shadow in the Wind’, and whilst they both have the same Barcelona backdrop it seems like people generally find a favourite in one – not both – of these books. I prefer the second journey to Zafon’s city where the cemetery of forgotten books (perhaps one of his best ideas) reappears, but where a writer, and not a reader, stands out against its gothic backdrop. Where ‘The Shadow in the Wind’ seemed to lose focus almost exactly halfway through (apparently a fault of the translation), ‘The Angel’s Game’ has a carefully crafted pace which doesn’t lose control.
What’s all the fuss?
David Martin’s abusive childhood creates a main character who longs for escapism – first in books and the fatherly figure of a bookseller, and later as a writer. His short thrillers become a serial feature in a newspaper, and soon he begins to write books of a similar nature. He finds everything he has ever wanted in the dark underworld of his stories of the city, but when he moves into a mansion at its heart he discovers that his fiction is becoming his reality.
The mysterious French editor Andreas Corelli appears with a business card and one wish: to have a book written that can change the hearts and minds of its reader. The writer – the role Martin is commissioned for – will be highly rewarded if and when he achieves this. But a locked room in the house hides letters and photographs that tell a story of a man forced to write a book – a story Martin only discovers when he is in the middle of an identical situation. To outline much more of the story would give the game away, however, a twisty plot filled with paranoia and claustrophobia in a city that’s very much alive creates a book that will quickly become one of your favourites.
In ‘The Angel’s Game’ Barcelona becomes a haven for two seemingly opposite souls: one good and one evil. Obviously things are not that simple and Zafon pulls you in a million directions until the chilling last few pages. One of the greatest characters of the book is the city itself and Zafon manages to make it a home as well as a place of love and fulfilment, on the outskirts of which a darker, overwhelming force is creeping in.
Pick this up if: you want to see Barcelona for the city it really is or just want to get out of cold Britain for the next week. Both ‘The Angel’s Game’ and ‘The Shadow in the Wind’ have been huge sellers but don’t let this put you off. There are always a couple of real gems amongst the titles that appeal to everyone, and this is definitely one of them.
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