Caught in the Angel's web

THE ANGEL'S GAME
** out of ***** (lol)

I am unenthusiastic about writing a review for Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Angel’s Game. After 531 pages, I am over it. It’s not like it was unpleasant, boring, depressing or poorly written. It was merely long and a bit confusing, and the characters didn’t draw me in. The thing that kept me reading it (besides having to do so because of the book club) was the mystery behind it all. Who was this man with the angel pin? What was hiding in the damp tower house? Would David find happiness? It’s not that I really cared for David all that much. It’s just that Zafon wrapped me into the story. And maybe that’s reason enough to read a book.

Here’s what I liked and disliked:

Likes: string of supernatural running throughout; use of ‘web’ imagery; setting of early 20th century Barcelona; the mystery.

Dislikes: flat characters who don’t seem to have any internal struggle, that we know of. David Martin is a man who seems to ride along life based on an easy computation of his knowledge of what he wants to do and accepting the opportunities that come his way. It’s all external struggle. Since I am an ‘Internal Struggle’ kind of girl, I am often disappointed in characters who don’t seem to face this struggle. Or maybe, in reality, I have a hard time being empathetic to such characters. Had Martin had to have faced such a struggle, though, author Zafon would have had a lot of work on his hands, for the book itself is a web of events, plentiful characters and a convoluted mystery. I got especially confused when the author went back in time to explain past events. I kept forgetting who the main players were.

A side note: Throughout the read, I kept wondering why the book seemed so familiar. Then I realized that I had read Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind for a previous book club. I didn’t write a review for that one. Our M.O. was to go to a restaurant or prepare a meal that related to the culture of the book, then discuss the book over the meal. We went out for tapas for Shadow, and all I remember is drinking sangria and flirting with the waiter, Robert!