A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.
The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
So begins the burden of the story, though the protagonist, David Martin, has no trouble churning words by the minute, page after page, year after year. Faust this is not, though there is a Luciferesque character in the guise of a publisher waving a deal (read lots of dough and no fame) for a story. Tickles the imagination of many an aspiring writer on a moral high-horse. Wouldn't we like to think that we'd jump at a contract that says you've got to crank out 6.66 pages a day in exchange for our lives? With this blatant clue to the identity of the publisher supplied by the overactive imagination of our hero, it is no surprise his deadly illness vanishes once he agrees to write. Oh happy day.
In The Angel's Game, Zafon toys with the idea that the act of narrating a story could be diabolical. The devil-publisher Andreas Corelli enlists David to write a literary project, 'a narrative that awakens the soul', 'a fable that will make the unwary fall on their knees and persuade them that they have seen the light, that there is something to believe in, something to live and die for - even to kill for.'
Beyond this, there is much rambling and schoolboy detective work, omens, violent deaths. All this to create a religion through words. Similar to The Shadow of the Wind, for which this is a prequel; the characters share a pervasive sense of the gothic and the macabre. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the Sempere and Sons bookshop make an appearance here, as is the sinister city of Barcelona, a character fit to contain the dark elements spun by Zafon.
The spooky epilogue and narrative rhythm notwithstanding (and the superb translation by Lucia Graves), The Angel's Game is at best a guilty pleasure for a rainy afternoon. Apart from the hyperbolic first page and subsequent forays into the art of literary creation for the benefit of the voyeuristic among us, the story becomes a victim of its own making - a casualty in the impressive number of bodies that pile up in the second half of the book. Seems like something written for a movie, fast-paced, dark, and instant gratification for our illogical natures.
Sometimes pulp is best left in orange juice. Go watch a movie.
(And yes, I bought the book after reading the first page. I always do. Read the first page that is.)
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