C. Ruiz Zafon

Marina

Emiley Jones

I didn't realize then that sooner or later the ocean of time brings back the memories we submerge in it.

Before long he had begun to understand the nature of light and what it was trying to tell him.

Alina Suszek

“Our body begins to destroy itself from the moment it is born. We are fragile. We’re creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans”

“People only disappear when they have somewhere to go“

karla vera

“Todos tenemos un secreto encerrado bajo llave en el ático del alma.”

“Un universo en el que su vida era una simple gota de agua entre las olas”

Anna Kálmán 

We are fragile. We’re creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Quince años mas tarde, la memoria de aquel dia ha vuelto a mi. He visto a aquel muchacho vagando entre las brumas de la estacion de Francia y el nombre de Marina se ha encendido de nuevo como una herida fresca. Todos tenemos un secreto encerrado bajo llave en el atico del alma. este es el mio.

En la Barcelona de 1980 Oscar Drai suena despierto, deslumbrado por los placeres mocernistas cercanos al internado en el que estudia. En una de sus escapadas conoce a Marina, una chica audaz que comparte con oscar la aventura de adentrarse en un enigma doloroso del pasado de la ciudad. Un misterioso personaje de la posguerra se propuso el mayor desafio imaginable, pero su ambicion lo arrastro por sendas siniestras cucyas consecuencias debe pagar alguien todavia hoy.

Marina 

This is the first book I enjoyed when I was in high school.

Julen Hernandez

Una de las obras más tempranas de Ruíz Zafón, como se puede observar en la narración. Podemos destacar el ambiente típico de sus obras: una Barcelona oscura y llena de secretos, asesinos y personajes misteriosos y un final desgarrador. Es una novela muy rápida de leer y sin complicaciones estilísticas, rica en descripciones y en transmitir el alma de los personajes, tanto los principales como las figuras trágicas secundarias. Definitivamente recomendable y con un final, personalmente algo predecible y lento, pero que pone un broche final a la historia de acorde con su tonalidad. 

Alba Martín Díaz

♱ zuzanna 

natalka

nie mogę się pozbierać po tej książce

Jeremy Mano

Simon Harding

As usual within minutes of opening this book, Zafon had transported me to Barcelona. There I stayed, one foot in his tale, the other going through the motions of real life, thousands of miles away from where the author had my mind held hostage.

Marina is an enchanting story. For much of the time, I really was Oscar. I felt his love growing for Marina, felt his longing, felt his fear. All of them leapt out of the page at me, making me long for the next time I could spend immersed in Zafon's world. 

It really is beautifully written, by an author I hopelessly admire. I only wish I were fluent in Spanish and could have read this story in the language it was meant to be consumed in.

So why only 4 stars? I loved everything about this book except a small portion of the plot. It just crossed that line between what I was prepared to accept and what was just too far-fetched to be true. 

All in all, a wonderful read!

Elena Fernandez

Tengo miedo de recomendar este libro por miedo de infligerle el dolor que sentí al terminar esta novela. Tanto como Oscar, Marina y German y cada historia de cada ser creció hacer parte de mi historia. Me acompañaron (durante pocos días devo decir, ya que debore el libro) en cada pensamiento. Pensando en cómo estos personajes interpretarían mi día a día tan mundano. Bueno para decir que Zafón no decepciona. Esta es la segunda novela que leo de este escritor. Hace 10 años leí 'el príncipe de la niebla' y hasta ahora (no he leído muchas novelas) fue uno de mis libros favoritos. Bueno pues ahora puedo decir con certeza que esta es sin duda mi novela favorita y te la aconsejo.

The story is very entertaining in the tragic, fantasy, and imaginative romantic mystery style, and of course, like the rest of the author's works, in the Gothic style. Like all the author's other books, the story takes place in the city of Barcelona. The author's descriptions show Barcelona as a magical and mysterious city. I love to visit Barcelona 💕

Shidehdeishidi

Daniel Carril

Arturo Hernández

La historia comienza con fuerza, pero se desenvuelve en una trama un tanto loca, un tanto incoherente. Hay muchas ideas en este texto y tristemente, el resultado final deja diversos temas inconclusos, tramas quedan volando y detalles que están ya marcados en la mente del lector se vuelven insignificantes.

El estilo de escritura es bueno, la historia es lo que me pierde un poco...

Alfredo santos

Lo leí en una sentada y terminé inundado en lágrimas involuntarias. Pocos autores pueden mezclar suspenso, aventura con una historia de amor trascendental como Ruiz Zafon.

Maribel González

Tres días me ha durado. El libro es cortito y muy fácil de leer. La historia te intriga desde el principio, los personajes son maravillosos y Ruiz Zafón es único como narrador. Intuía que la trama de Kolvenik era oscura, pero me esperaba otra cosa, algo más real. Eso sí, en conjunto me ha gustado mucho, aunque el giro del final no me ha sorprendido del todo, a mitad de la lectura ya me lo imaginaba. Pero vamos, que la he disfrutado mucho, Ruiz Zafón ha conseguido atraparme entre sus páginas una vez más y ha hecho que se me encogiera el corazón con ese final.

Óscar Drai se marchó huyendo de sus recuerdos, pensando ingenuamente que, si ponía suficiente distancia, las voces de su pasado se acallarían para siempre.  Ahora ha regresado a su ciudad, Barcelona, para conjurar sus fantasmas y enfrentarse  a su memoria. La macabra aventura que le marcó en su juventud, el terror y la locura rodearon, curiosamente, la más bella historia de amor.

Alexia

En este caso realmente necesito una media estrella para poder calificarlo con las verdaderas 3,5 que que quiero poner.

Emir Andrés Ibañez

Mi error fue leer este libro después de haber leído La sombra del viento. Nos encontramos con que Zafón utilizó antes el mismo concepto que luego puliría de manera magistral, pero aquí siento que vi el borrador de una historia apresurada y un tanto delirante.

Elena Garcia Navarro

Esta ha sido una relectura por nostalgia. Me apetecía volver a leer este libro por el buen recuerdo que tenía de él. 
Y en cierto modo me ha decepcionado ligeramente... Leyéndolo de adulta estaba buscando una profundidad en los personajes que no he encontrado y la trama me ha parecido muy predecible, puntos que no noté cuando lo leí de adolescente. Lo mejor del libro, sin duda, es que es una oda a la Barcelona gótica, resulta imposible no enamorarse de la ciudad, sus secretos y sus leyendas.

"When boarding-school student Oscar Drai meets Marina, she promises him a mystery and takes him to a secret graveyard deep in Barcelona, where they witness a woman dressed in black lay a single rose atop a gravestone etched with a black butterfly. Their curiosity leads them down a dangerous path, and they discover a decades-old conspiracy that puts their lives in the hands of forces more sinister and mystical than they could have believed possible"--

Olivera Mitić

This is the second book by Zafon that I've read (the first one being The Prince of Mist), and this time around it hit my taste a bit better. There is this magic happening in the way the author writes Barcelona, which I loved very much. Now I'm just longing for more books with European settings. 

Anyways, the ending is what made this book for me. While the twist wasn't so unexpected, it did still hit me very hard and I have a feeling that it will stick with me for a while. 

Marina is a gothic story, beautifully told with very likable characters that all have intriguing pasts. There were parts of the book that scared me quite a lot (hey, I'm a huge chicken when it comes to this), but I was so attached to the individual stories of the characters that I just didn't mind. In my opinion, the whole book would have been better if Zafon had just stuck with a contemporary tale, rather than a supernatural one. 

While this author hasn't blown me away, like he has so many of my friends here on Goodreads, I would still like to check out some more of his books, with The Shadow of the Wind being my next read of his. 

 I'm counting this for the Around the World in 80 Books challenge as a book set in Spain.

In May 1980, fifteen-year-old Oscar Drei suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in the old quarter of Barcelona. For seven days and nights no one knows his whereabouts. It all began the previous autumn when, while exploring the dilapidated grounds of what seemed to be an abandoned house filled with portraits, he inadvertently stole a gold pocket watch. Thus begins Oscar's friendship with Marina and her father Herman Blau, a portrait painter. Marina takes Oscar to the gardens of the nearby cemetery to watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the fourth Sunday of each month. At 10 a.m., a coach drives up to the cemetery and a woman with her face shrouded, wearing gloves, and holding a single rose is helped down from the coach and walks over to a nameless gravestone, where she sets down the flower, pauses for a moment, and then returns to the coach. The gravestone bears no marking but the outline of a strange-looking butterfly with open wings. On one of their subsequent walks Oscar and Marina spot the same woman and determine to follow her. Thereupon begins their journey into the woman's past, and that of the object of her devotion. It is a journey that takes them to the heights of a forgotten, postwar-Barcelona society, of now aged or departed aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons; and into the depths of the city's mysterious underground of labyrinthine sewers, corrupt policemen, beggars' hovels, and criminal depravity.

Jelke Lenaerts

This was very enjoyable and I’m glad I finally read it. However, the story didn’t grab me at all and I feel like I might forget this soon.

Silvia Verano

Lo leería una y otra vez, y nunca dejaría de maravillarme.

Bruno Darío

Menudo tostón. Empieza contando una historia y de repente se va sacando personajes de la manga, cada cual más extraño, y pasa a contar unos delirios fantasiosos totalmente distintos a la primera trama sobre misterios que dos niños van investigando porque, como todo el mundo sabe, a los niños que juegan a los policías los adultos siempre les cuentan todo... :/

Y sé que es medio fantasía, pero es que 0 credibilidad.

Encima no hay ni un solo personaje que no hable como un repipi pedante, y sin estilos diferenciados para cada uno. Y el lenguaje en general todo siempre recargado en exceso y como si se hubiera propuesto buscar sinónimos de todo a propósito para elevarlo.

Una decepción tremenda. No he podido acabarlo, así que quizá al final todo tiene algo más de sentido, pero si no vale la pena llegar a él... tú me dirás.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's haunting gothic mystery, which has long been a cult classic in Spain and is now an international bestseller. "We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine." Fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai meets the strange Marina while he's exploring an old quarter of Barcelona. She leads Oscar to a cemetery, where they watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the last Sunday of each month. At exactly ten o'clock in the morning, a woman shrouded in a black velvet cloak descends from her carriage to place a single rose on an unmarked grave. When Oscar and Marina decide to follow her, they begin a journey that transports them to a forgotten postwar Barcelona-a world of aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons--and reveals a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets.

Dorianne Vervoort

Reread June 2020: 
To me, there’s nothing like a Zafòn. I have never read a book that even compares to his writing style. To me, he is the ultimate master of words. 

I loved Marina 5 years ago and I still adore her. She is so brave and courageous and she didn’t deserve what happened to her. 
I do wonder what happened to Germàn. I hope he had a good life, even though Marina is his life.

Sonia Flores

Temo redundar al reseñar dos libros seguidos de este autor, porque es cierto, el aura de misterio está sobre todo lo que he leído de él, pero este tenía algo más.
Tenía a Marina.
Además de los secretos que escondían las calles de Barcelona, están esos particulares secretos guardados en el ático de estas almas, secretos que al unirse con el resto hacen de esta experiencia una lectura increíble, llena de terror, tristeza, inquietud y sensaciones que variarán según quién lo lea. Me ha parecido un libro interesantísimo y con mucho gusto le resté horas a mi sueño para terminarlo.

Aprendí a entender a los personajes, a justificar sus actos y a no enjuiciar sus maneras de pensar. Creo que me compenetré mucho con ellos y logré, más que seguir el hilo de la historia, a sentir como ellos sentían. Está de más añadir lo que siempre digo sobre las descripciones de este autor porque aunque bien es sabido que son un espectáculo sin igual, lo repito en las anteriores reseñas (motivo por el cual no quiero extenderme demasiado).
Magnífico. Me fascina el hecho de ahondar en el pasado de un personaje para entender su presente y quizá atisbar un poco de su futuro.

Laura

Oh my God, guys, this book was absolutely fantastic. If I had to describe it, it would be Edgar Allan Poe meets Frankenstein with added Bioshock and some The Phantom of the Opera thrown in for good measure. If any of that sounds interesting to you, then pick this book up now. The characters are perfection. The plot is intriguing. The writing is enchanting. Seriously, Zafón's descriptions of Barcelona will make you want to hop on the nearest plane to Spain right now. Over the course of reading this book Barcelona has shot up my places to visit list to where it now rests comfortably under Prague. And the descriptions themselves are easily some of the most perfect descriptions I've ever read. They flow seamlessly through the passage, and I can visualize the setting perfectly. Even the reason for the descriptions makes sense, because the narrator Oscar wants to be an architect.

This book was also funny. I don't know why that surprised me, but it did, especially since I actually laughed out loud at some of the parts and was moved to tears by some parts, both rare emotions for me to have while reading. Like I said before, too, I actually loved all the characters. I didn't mind copious amounts of time dedicated to the backstories of each of the characters, because each one interested me. While Oscar, the narrator, was the least developed character, I still got a sense as to who he was through his actions and still rooted for him over the course of the novel. Besides, I like narrators like Oscar. The story isn't necessarily about him, it's about the story of Mijail Kolvenik and Eva Irinova. And Marina's story too. Oscar just is our gateway to those stories. 

My only real issue with the writing was an abundance of said bookisms- he mumbled, she shouted, I concluded, etc. But I didn't find myself that bothered by them. The ending also felt a bit like a different story too, but I wasn't that bothered by it either. In fact, I loved the ending, just as I loved the middle and the beginning. This book took me kind of a while to read for a book its size, because I wanted to savor it and also because I was scared it would pull a This Savage Song, where I loved the beginning and the middle but despised the ending. Not this book, which was so goddamn good throughout. 

Continue reading this review on my blog here: http://bookwormbasics.blogspot.com/20...

Giulia 

Sul mio blog: http://fcbgiulia92.blogspot.it/2013/1...

Voglio essere totalmente sincera con voi, non ne sono rimasta entusiasta tanto quanto immaginavo/speravo. E dire che questa storia aveva tutti i connotati per entrare nella mia lista dei "mai più senza": una bella casa diroccata in copertina, atmosfere cupe e molto gotiche, insomma ero assolutamente certa che questa storia mi avrebbe fatto sognare. Se poi aggiungiamo che è anche quello che l'autore predilige non dovrei avere dubbi. Eppure non ne sono convinta al 100%.
Inizialmente ho trovato il libro molto lento, non riuscivo a darmi stimoli per continuare la lettura. Poi mi sono detta "diamogli tempo, vedrai che andando avanti ti prenderà". In effetti più la storia va avanti, più l'intreccio e il mistero si fa fitto e interessante, tanto che verso la metà del romanzo ero interamente dentro la storia. Arrivata a questo punto, ero convinta di essermi sbloccata e credo che sia stato proprio così, poi d'un tratto ho ricominciato a sentire la narrazione pesante. I continui racconti dei personaggi hanno avuto su di me un effetto orribile! Sentivo che perdevo l'attenzione sulla storia principale e quando finalmente ritornavo al punto di prima non riuscivo più a trovare il filo del discorso.
Fortunatamente negli ultimi capitoli il romanzo prende una piega decisamente avvincente: tutti i misteri vengono risolti e la verità viene a galla, ma forse non è la verità che ci aspettavamo.
Ho trovato il finale del romanzo molto più veloce rispetto al resto del romanzo, tanto che il finale vero e proprio del libro mi ha lasciata totalmente spiazzata e anche un pò triste.
Una cosa che ho apprezzato è stato il racconto in prima persona. Come un grande, unico flashback, Oscar ripercorre con noi la sua avventura. Non poteva esserci scelta più azzeccata, niente avrebbe saputo trasmettere meglio le sensazioni e le emozioni del nostro protagonista. Devo dire però che il personaggio che ho trovato più completo, anche se con molti punti oscuri, è proprio quello che dà il nome al romanzo. Marina è stata il mio personaggio preferito, quell'alone di mistero che ha portato con sè fino a quasi al finale del libro ha saputo farmi amare alla follia questo personaggio. In un certo senso, capisco anche la sua scelta di non rivelare a Oscar tutta la verità. Se gli avesse detto come erano realmente le cose, probabilmente tutta la loro avventura avrebbe preso una piega decisamente diversa. Lei voleva disperatamente qualcuno che potesse chiamare amico, ognuno di noi avrebbe bisogno di qualcuno di cui fidarsi cecamente.
Credetemi, il finale di questa storia vi farà commuovere ed emozionare. Non è il solito finale scontanto, banale, buttato giù alla bene e meglio per cercare di concludere la storia. No, non è così.
E' un finale dalla lacrima facile, vi giuro di solito non piango leggendo un libro ma in questo caso ho dovuto trattenermi dal farlo. In quanto ad emotività, se la gioca senza problemi con "La custode di mia sorella". Indubbiamente sono due storie molto diverse, ma entrambi i finali di queste storie sapranno emozionarvi come non vi è mai capitato con nessun altro romanzo.
Una trama leggera, ma non per questo banale. Una storia creata dallo stesso Zafon per un pubblico più giovane rispetto agli altri suoi romanzi, ma che al tempo stesso sa incantare anche chi giovane non è più :).

Marina

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