Reading "Marina" I finally managed to find a downside to Carlos Ruiz Zafón's work. He's building all of his novels on same foundations of mystery and horror, and they evolve in a same way discovering grand and tragic destinies of figures from the recent past which reflect in main characters' stories. To be clear, Zafón is doing it all with great skill, making it impossible to put the book down. It's just that it becomes repetitive reading the (almost) same story over and over again.
The story is narrated by Oscar Drei, a fifteen-year-old living in a catholic boarding school in Barcelona. One day he meets a girl of his age named Marina and together they discover the secret of the once famous doctor specialized in prosthetics Mijail Kolvenik and his wife Eva Irinova. It's a tragic story of love, greed, hope, madness and horror which has yet to finish. Of course, the story of Mijail and Eva will leave its marks on Oscar and Marina, who get as close to each other as two persons can, becoming best friends and falling in love with each other.
As usual, Zafón fills the book with many interesting characters, but this one is shorter than his later work so we unfortunately don't get to see much of them. Nevertheless, he successfully creates a veil of mystery and melancholy around each of them and makes us care for their destinies. Another thing that keeps you glued to the book is the atmosphere he creates. It's a dark but beautiful hidden Barcelona, with its narrow streets and old buildings, the same one he revisits in his later works. There's one difference, as this novel is set in 1979/80, later than his other works. Because of the setting and events that take place it's easy to forget when it is all supposed to be happening, but if you're aware of it you'll see it doesn't fit the story, or at least I felt that way. The problem is there is no background difference between the events from more than thirty years ago the characters are told about and that what they go through in the novel. Like no time has passed. I assume it's because no matter how modern the city gets, Zafón still sees the mystical Barcelona somewhere in it. It's a beautiful and commendable view, but in this particular case it just isn't much believable. And here we come to my main objection. I fell in love with Zafón's work for many reasons but one in particular. His ability to tell a story like it's supernatural but do it so without any supernatural elements. It's because of that I find his earlier work, and "Marina" amongst it, faulty, with its unnecessary use of supernatural. I'll admit it brings a great sense of uneasiness and fear, more than your average horror in any case, but it makes the story less believable. In other words, I can imagine there's the cemetery of forgotten books somewhere in Barcelona (however improbable that might be), but I can't imagine there are human-doll hybrids going around killing people.
Another recurring Zafón's theme repeats here, the fascination with books. It isn't so obvious as in some other of his works but it turns out to be very important. From Marina's dream to become a great writer to the realization that the book we've read is in fact written by Marina and Oscar. It's a device he used again in his later work, as well as many other, but with a better skill and to a greater effect. That shows he develops as an author, getting better with time. Just like we dream Marina would...
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