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I am a man and no feminist by any stretch. I also count myself a recovering Cathoholic. Cavemen originated Adam and Eve, heaping on their female counterparts the burden of the fall of Eden b/c they were stronger physically if not emotionally. That’s how they got away with spreading that story. Make no mistake. Any woman will tell you, Gents, strength permits us a world of conveniences they don’t have, like the ability to single-handedly author creation stories and much of history.

Thankfully, we needn’t go on promulgating the lie that we kill women and tear down beauty because, due to some innate bugaboo, we must love things to death. Today modern man must own up, assume his share of blame, and be a man. Technology in developed countries (apologies, we must question Spain in this regard, as this book began as a bestseller there) has mostly devalued the strength difference. Still recklessly chauvinistic stories and male insecurities linger. Normally I only read and do not write reviews but with The Shadow of the Wind my beliefs would not leave me alone. I would be guilty by complicity without standing up, stepping in and urging a strong cautionary warning, as I believe the modern male especially must, and we all must as fair dues for the gift of existence. Representing one’s self is a small price to pay.

This is a great book. And that’s the problem. Like so many imports, it begs acceptance and then coolly steals the welcome mat. Its detractors are supposed to chalk it up as, at best, simply one more giddy cultural faux paus that leaves U.S. cash registers ringing and American sensibilities with a bad bout of the flu. Bestseller? I was offended. Take this passage:

“If a doctor had been present perhaps he would have been able to stop the hemorrhage that took [the pregnant teenager]’s life, while she shrieked and scratched at the locked door, on the other side of which her father wept in silence and her mother cowered staring at her husband … the sheets and afterbirth were thrown into the boilers …”

I can’t imagine the worst inner city slum urchin in the States doing that to his daughter, regardless of circumstance, but we are supposed to believe he had cause for various reasons I won’t deign to go into here.

There is a general disdain for female characters throughout, and no I’m not talking about Fermin’s antics which I found very funny as a matter of fact. Women’s heads being casually blown off, brutal stabbings, “b*tch” slappings galore (pardon my Espanol). I was badly yearning to recommend the book on whole to my wife. It seems there is so little unoffensive (or at least artfully balanced) writing these days. I dutifully wrote off the violence. Then I came to the trite and grizzly murder of JC’s love interest and I said this is not okay. Not fun. We have come a long way since this was good entertainment. This is foreign caveman stuff and if we are lulled into believing otherwise it is because we think too little of ourselves and have forgotten that shouting ‘no’ out loud is not just a right but a responsibility.

I’m a fan of tragedies, Braveheart, etc. but they have to go down easy and the incomprehensible motives of “the Don” at the turning point of this tragedy I can only relate to insofar as they are ‘foreign’ and backwards, not really arising out of anything attributable to the familiar (could someone, perhaps Spanish, please explain him better maybe?). This saddened me to no end, as I took three years of Spanish b/c I admire the people and culture! I was gravely disappointed by this book.

A sinister subtext of TSOTW seemed to be a virtual compendium of domestic violence made deceptively gentler and more culturally acceptable to American audiences by Ms. Graves’ masterful translation. I don’t dispute the business sense of the translation. Hey, it’s a best-seller after all. *BUT* I do have trouble believing that the book’s apparently wide U.S. readership is properly prepared to have their values besieged when they read this story. I wasn’t. It can only be taken for what it is: a Spanish import, or we’re in bigger trouble than we think we are if this material goes down without a hiccup. That’s how globalization subtely erodes progress, by dragging us unwittingly back into the cave. Maybe the translation/cultural-edit was too deft with the exception of the above quoted scene (and you know which one I’m talking about) and possibly the ridiculously cruel and largely inexplicable gratuitous NM slaying. These events are in no way redeemed by the book’s end. If you take pleasure in this stuff, watch the nightly news instead. It’s cheaper by far and I daresay less offensive.

Better yet, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth comes to mind as an even-handed treatment, albeit regarding a different culture, of the capricious cruelties inflicted on women by men in less modern times and societies. It is no less reprehensible there, but at least that story sheds light on believable motives of one all too ungrateful man. The drama is furthermore earned not merely by advancing the plot as melodramatically as the author could imagine, but by giving a realistic and therefore constructive counter model of the emptiness of one man’s reckless power-mongering.

As for TSOTW, I can HIGHLY recommend the story as an import with only minor technical reservations as have been mentioned by other reviews such as the problematic epistolary tack for the concluding third part. To recommend TSOTW as a good story you can get into, love and rally-behind, sadly, I cannot. Otherwise, like me, due to the hardboiled criminal treatment of females (and I’m a crime story and murder mystery fan!) especially as the plot advancement gets firing on all cylinders, you’ll be asking yourself 2/3 through what has become of our values in this country if this is what constitutes a bestseller! You have been warned.
Rating: 2 / 5

This could have been a great novel, but it just fell short.
Rating: 3 / 5