Marina - Hardcover

Zafon, Carlos Ruiz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316044717 ISBN 13: 9780316044714

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2014

Synopsis

A haunting gothic mystery from Carlos Ruiz Zafon, 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 out 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 10 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.

About this title

About the Author

Carlos Ruiz Zafón is the author of seven novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Prince of Mist and the international phenomena The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game. His work has been published in more than fifty countries and honored with numerous awards. He divides his time between Barcelona, and Los Angeles.

Reviews

Gr 8 Up—Set in Barcelona, Spain from late 1979 to May 1980, this gothic novel centers around 15-year-old boarding school student Oscar Drai. Instead of studying during his free time, the teen explores the city, and one day ends up in an area that seems deserted. Drawn in by music coming from an old dilapidated house, Oscar is given a scare by the owner, an eccentric and haunted German artist. Having accidently taken a watch from the house, the boy returns to bring the valuable item back and meets the enigmatic Marina. Realizing that they both like mysteries, Marina invites Oscar on an escapade to a graveyard to observe a woman who leaves a red rose on an unmarked grave. The two follow this woman, lose her, but eventually wander into an abandoned greenhouse filled with sinister marionettes and grotesque photos. Soon, the narrator becomes embroiled in the lives and histories of a presumed dead actress, recluse tycoon, and mad scientist obsessed with escaping death. From the very first page, this beautifully written work of historical fiction is impossible to put down. With elements of romance, mystery, and horror, none of them overwhelming the other, this complex volume that hints at Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manages to weave together three separate stories for a cohesive and eerie result.—Jesten Ray, Seattle Public Library, WA

While wandering the streets of Barcelona, Oscar hears a haunting song and follows it to an ancient mansion overgrown with weeds. There he meets the entrancing, ethereal Marina and her painter father, who live a quiet, antiquated life in the ramshackle, candle-lit building. Soon Oscar spends almost all his free time with Marina, and when they follow a black-veiled woman home from a cemetery, they begin to uncover a series of increasingly disturbing clues about her, the unmarked grave she regularly visits, and the black butterfly symbol that seems to appear everywhere. It all leads to the unsettling history of one of Barcelona’s industrial giants, Mijail Kolvenik, a prosthetics designer who gained renown in the aftermath of WWI and became obsessed with healing deformity and disease—a fixation that led to his horrific fall from grace and left behind terrifying secrets. Originally published in Spain in 1999, this sweeping gothic mystery from Zafón (The Watcher in the Shadows, 2013) delivers gritty atmosphere, perilous action, propulsive storytelling, and ghastly body horror, all tempered by a bittersweet romance. Grades 8-11. --Sarah Hunter

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316044717
• ISBN 13: 9780316044714
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336