The Labyrinth of the Spirits

 

The Labyrinth of the Spirits is the final instalment of a cycle known as "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books". Its predecessors include The Shadow of the Wind (2004), The Angel’s Game (2009) and The Prisoner of Heaven (2013). This equates to 2232 pages, and that means I have spent quite a few hours over the years in the esteemed company of the author Carlos Ruiz Zafón, who sadly left us much too early this year, aged 55.

The popularity of the series must buoy fans of literature in that the subject of the novels is literature itself, though the context is the dark period of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath in Franco’s Spain. The melding of Letters and History produces a unique blend of genres, including mystery, crime, romance, thriller (and various subgenres, such as literary thriller and political thriller). In this, there is something for everyone – though this last instalment is over 800 pages – so one for those who like their books big, like a big Shiraz.

The main protagonist of The Labyrinth of Spirits is a young woman named Alicia Gris, who connects to Alice in Wonderland (she meets a set of surreal encounters in a labyrinth structure; she enjoys pill popping). Alicia has a disability, a strange allure to all men she encounters and an off-handed sexuality that has led to some comparisons to Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander. Like the Millennium series, the fault line of evil deeds moves beyond individual (devastating) cruelty to wider, political and cultural evils and corruption at the very highest levels. Like Larsson, the author has died in his literary prime, though at least Zafón was able to enjoy the fruits of his success.

Interestingly, the blurb on the back of the novel focuses on the earlier characters from The Shadow of the Wind – Daniel of Sempere & Sons, his wife Bea, and lifelong friend Fermin – all of who play a part in this edition, but more as bookends to the immediate mystery being solved by Alicia. The sweep of time in the series takes us closer to the present in this conclusion, with Franco’s death stunning the Sempere set into tears, silence and signs of the cross. ‘I don’t toast anyone’s death,’ says Fermín. Any celebration is in this context is muted, since – to quote Shakespeare -- “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”

The Guardian review of this novel concludes with this statement:

With Catalonian attempts at secession currently being tensely rejected by Spain, it is to be hoped that Zafón’s next books will deal as seriously and enjoyably with the present and future of Barcelona (2018, September 14).

With the author’s death, commentary on the fates of Catalonia and Spain will have to wait for another author. Unless, of course, Zafón left something for a future reader to discover in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books! Actually, a political reading of the Cemetery series would suggest that the author has said much already, and the power of literature lies in the shadows. 

I end this very short reflection on the subject of books, libraries and labyrinths, like something that could be found within Borges’ ‘Library of Babel’. Here Daniel Sempere is passing on the secrets of the Cemetery of Books is the cornerstone of Shadow of the Wind and all that follows: 

‘This is a place of mystery, Juliàn, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens’ (760).

Reading Carlos Ruiz Zafón is like stepping back into another era when literature had this kind of grip; when melodrama and miracle were an accepted part of the contract between reader and writer; and where darkness isn’t the end of hope. I like to think of all the books and writers contained within the Cemetery of Books going on and on, with readers and writers in a sacred partnership, until the end of time.