Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (review)

Eager to escape the confining halls of his boarding school, fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai wanders the streets of Barcelona in 1979, exploring abandoned old homes in the formerly wealthy but now decaying neighborhood of Sarrià. His expeditions lead him to befriend Marina, a mysterious girl who welcomes Oscar into the crumbling mansion she shares with her father, an ailing reclusive artist. On an outing to a cemetery, Oscar and Marina encounter a ghostly woman cloaked in black, and what follows is three intertwining gothic tales, replete with jealous lovers, mad doctors, tragic illnesses, and untimely loss. Zafón’s cinematic prose in this Spanish import gives both a vividness and urgency to elements that might otherwise seem merely melodramatic, and classic horror tropes—a spider across the hand, a woman veiled in black—are used to astounding effect here, creating an eerie atmosphere that chills the reader even as it moves them forward. A deep sense of melancholy pervades the narration as an older Oscar reflects upon his time with Marina, setting the stage for that particular tragedy, but his directness also delivers scares in spades, as he recounts with grotesque detail narrow escapes from sinister automatons and a confrontation with a decaying human monster. A dark and stormy night isn’t even necessary for this immersive, truly terrifying tale to leave readers with more than a few nightmares.