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    Marina
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    Marina
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    Marina
    Audiobook7 hours

    Marina

    Written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

    Narrated by Daniel Weyman

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine."

    When Fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in Barcelona, no one knows his whereabouts for seven days and seven nights.

    His story begins when he meets the strange Marina while he's exploring an old quarter of the city. She leads Oscar to a cemetery, where they watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the last Sunday of each month. At exactly ten 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 – an reveals a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets.

    Carlos Ruiz Zafon's haunting Marina has long been a cult classic in Spain and is now an international bestseller.

    A Hachette Audio production.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateJul 22, 2014
    ISBN9781478953692
    Unavailable
    Marina
    Author

    Carlos Ruiz Zafon

    Carlos Ruiz Zafón is the author of eight novels, including the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed Cemetery of Forgotten Books series: The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game, The Prisoner of Heaven, and The Labyrinth of the Spirits. His work, which also includes prizewinning young adult novels, has been translated into more than fifty languages and published around the world, garnering numerous awards and reaching millions of readers. He lives in Los Angeles.

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    Reviews for Marina

    4/5

    483 ratings56 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A deliciously gothic tale about Oscar, a boy in Barcelona who meets a girl named Marina and her father Herman in an old, falling-down mansion. One night when Oscar and Marina are walking in an old cemetery, they spy an old woman in black setting a rose on an unmarked grave. This ends up leading them to a series of strange people in strangers situations, including some pretty terrifying monsters. I really enjoyed this one. It's a little predictably tragic, but it works - that's just the kind of book this is. The imagery is fantastic and the characters are fascinating. Definitely going to be picking up more Zafon.
    • 5/5
      Another wonderful novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This book is almost two stories in one. The main character, Oscar, stumbles upon both a new friendship and a years-old mystery in Barcelona. Early on in his friendship with Marina she takes him to a cemetery and they witness a woman in black, who they then follow to a strange greenhouse. At the same time that Oscar gets to know Marina better, practically becoming part of the family, he also delves into the story behind the woman and what he found in the greenhouse. This story is a mix of a horror/thriller and a wonderful story of love and friendship, and is at turns terrifying, beautiful, and heartbreaking.
    • 5/5
      In short ? It's a modern classic !

      This feels like a delightful weird crossover between frankenstein & great expectations ... But in the best way possible.
      I can fully understand why this is Zafon's most favourite novel !
      Shivers rolled down my spine, tears were shed ... It was an emotional rollercoaster but one i would take again without a second thought !

    • 5/5
      Another outstanding book from a favorite author, Marina takes us once again to Barcelona, that Spanish city of secrets, love, mysterious buildings, and magical realism.A young man meets a beautiful girl and falls in love. He escapes from school periodically to spend time with her and her father. But mystery and horror await as they discover old secrets and lost family ties.This isn't an ordinary romance with dreary emotions. It's much better written; Zafon has a unique style that's intriguing and lyrical. The suspense is nicely handled, the young lovers sweet without being cloying. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      The writing is deeply moving. Zafon is skilled with words. He could probably write about paint on a curb and move me deeply. I love his command of words it's like virtual reality for your ears. He does what Bob Ross the American painter did on his live tv series except Zafron does it with words. What I really didn't like about the book was the English accent of the narrator. This takes place in Barcelona and the English accent was all WRONG my mind kept placing the characters in London. PLEASE use an accent that fits one of a Spanish speaker. Thankfully the narrator is incredibly gifted and he was an absolute pleasure to listen to but his accent is all wrong for this piece.
    • 3/5
      Oscar is a fifteen year old school boy, who has met a girl called Marina and her father who is a painter of some talent. One night Marina takes him to see a strange ritual at a local graveyard, where a woman dressed in black arrived by a horse drawn coach and leaves a single red rose on a grave marked only by a black butterfly. They decide to follow her to find out who she is, and by doing so discover a shadowy secret in the catacombs and sewers of Barcelona. It takes them on a whirlwind journey through the dark underside of the city, where they confront their greatest fears, and discovery their true mettle.

      Really a YA book, and is a melodramatic gothic horror, which is not my sort of thing really. There is nothing scary in the book, but there are some really creepy parts. Nicely written, as most Zafon books are, and I like the way that he manages to convey the atmosphere in the scenes perfectly. Have given it three, but 2.5 stars is more realistic.
    • 3/5
      Atmospheric and languidly creepy, more gothic mystery than horror.
    • 5/5
      Welcome to the great Gothic cliche-fest. All the stock characters are here. The ethereally beautiful, doomed maiden, with a terrible secret. The mysterious veiled woman, with a terrible secret. The mysterious murderous monster that lives in the sewers, with a terrible secret. They're all here, but it doesnt matter. Cliched as it is, this is still a great read. the writing is slick & economical, fluid poetry moves the reader forward with prgressive revelations, that while not exactly earth-shaking, are sufficiently intriguing to keep the reader entertained until the denouement. In addition the book wins through its wonderful evocation of Barcelona's past glories and tarnished underside. The author is careful to keep the modern world at bay, and its very easy to slip into believing the novel is set sometime between the late 19th & early 20th centuries, and get a shock when reminded it actually take splace in the late 70s', with a pungent whiff of the only recently passed Franco era. The two protagonists, the beautiful, doomed Marina, and the troubled teenaged narrator Oscar, are both very likeable, and the reader will shed a tear at the inevitable conclusion of their budding but frustrated romance. All in all, its a worthwhile read that plucks at the reader's heartstrings and will have an emotional impact, and you will put it down feeling better for having read it. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Classic Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Oscar Drai; lonely, attends boarding school, relatively poor. Marina Blau; lonely, pretty, from a family of humble gentility. Oscar meets Marina when he stumbles into her life and house one day after curfew. He becomes inextricably tangled in the affairs of Marina and her father and due to this vanishes for one week. When he is found he will not say what happened or where he has been. The authorities are left to sift through the few clues they have and construct a tale which may or may not be true. But Oscar does know. And "Marina" is the tale of that week.Though Marina herself is a bit of a manic pixie dream girl, Ruiz Zafón gives her a bit more depth and sadness than is usually allowed for such characters. The settings are believably eccentric and haunting. Each place and building constructs itself in the imagination as the sentences unfurl across the pages. Beautiful writing. IF you liked The Shadow of the Wind, I highly recommend this.
    • 4/5
      Fifteen year old Oscar attends boarding school in Barcelona. He's not close to his family, so instead of going home over Christmas break he stays at school. He wanders around Barcelona at all hours. He finds an old house that he thinks is empty and goes inside. The house isn't empty. Eventually Oscar meets the occupants of the house; a young girl named Marina and her portrait artist father, German Blau. Oscar and Marina wander Barcelona looking to solve the mystery of the woman in black who leaves a rose on a grave every month. As they get more involved they uncover a deeper mystery that involves marionette people, medical experimentation and raising the dead. While I didn't think this book was as good as Zafon's later work -- the style is different and the pacing and storytelling are kind of off- I did think the mystery was very good. I had no idea what was happening. Zafon maintained a creepy atmosphere throughout the book. And, as usual when reading Zafon, I wanted to travel to Barcelona to see if the city is as pretty as he describes.
    • 4/5
      Fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai likes to leave his boarding school before dinner and wander the city. He stops at a house and follows a cat inside, beginning his adventure. He meets Marina and her father. Marina and Oscar observe a strange ritual at a cemetery. At 10:00 a.m. on the last Sunday of each month, a woman in black alights from a carriage and places a red rose on an unmarked tombstone. They follow her, and find themselves embroiled in an old and bizarre mystery. A great story, especially one to read in October! A quick and fascinating read!
    • 4/5
      It took me a few chapters to really get into this book. For some reason, the beginning wasn't doing much for me. I'm glad I stuck with it, because I ended up really liking the story and becoming attached to the characters. Oscar Drai is a fifteen year old boarding school student who comes across a mysterious girl named Marina and her father on one of his daily walks through Barcelona. In them, he finds the family he's always wanted. As his relationship with Marina grows, the two stumble upon a mystery buried under Barcelona. A mystery that involves tragic deaths and a strange black butterfly.Even though it took a bit of time to get into, I found the story very entertaining. I could have done without all the times that Oscar and Marina sat down with yet ANOTHER character involved in the mystery who told their life story and how it added to the whole situation. It started to feel a little gimmicky after the third or fourth time. I'd still recommend it. Especially with Halloween coming up. It makes for a fun and spooky read.
    • 4/5
      Zafon returns to the dark and brooding city of Barcelona with a great story. This is really a story within which multiple other stories are told throughout.
    • 5/5
      Sometimes, you just want to read a book with your guard down. You want to open the pages and see some promise and allow yourself to believe that this time, you're not going to be let down. You want to find that dark and stormy night and wander through it, feeling satisfied when you turn the last page. Marina gave me that present.Marina has the ambiance of a good gothic novel (though for various reasons, is not true gothic literature). It is technically a young adult novel, but it was Zafon's last (4th of 4) YA novel and definitely feels like a transitional piece. It "stars" a 15-year-old protagonist, but the themes are dark and intense.Jacob is often bored at his school and wanders the neighborhood in search of something interesting. Occasionally he is with his best friend JF, but more often, he's just alone. One day, he wanders down a particularly desolate part of town to an abandoned old house. For shaky reasons, Jacob decides to enter onto the property, hearing a sort of haunting melody emitting from within the old house. He enters the house, drawing nearer the music when he is surprised by the apparition of an elderly person with long white hair, and Jacob high-tails it out of the house, accidentally taking with him the old watch he had picked up right before the apparition.The watch is engraved with a loving quote to a "German." Jacob's guilt at having accidentally stolen the memento drives him to return to the house to return the watch, and there he meets Marina. She approaches him from outside the property, referring to him as the watch thief. Marina, intrigued by Jacob's interest in the dark and mysterious, invites him to accompany her the following morning on a mini-adventure. Jacob, entranced by Marina's beauty and personality, agrees. Thus begins the adventure of Marina and Jacob as they wend themselves deeper and deeper into the dark, deathly, and dangerous past and insert themselves into a web of lies, half-truths, cover-ups, and sinister obsession.The book is eerie, misty, mysterious, dark, and satisfying. It's got flavors of Shadows of the Wind (and, in my opinion, is much butter than Angels Game or Midnight Garden!) and is perfect for a rainy day/night!
    • 3/5
      Truthfully, I'm wasn't at all impressed with this story until near the end. I think the book was meant for a younger readership than myself, although if I read it as a teenage, I'm not sure I'd have liked it all that much then either. I found it very hard to believe that the two young characters, Oscar and Maria, would put themselves into the frightening situations in which they did. Their actions just did not seem believable to me. Why would Oscar just suddenly show up in a stranger's house and steal an object? Why would two young people put themselves directly into such grotesque danger? The way in which the story developed was extremely annoying as well. Why were the characters telling the story instead of me, the reader, reading what the characters actually did? What a tedious way to tell what should have been a very absorbing tale! The way it was told made me want to read through it as quickly as possible to get to the end and be done with it. This is a shame because I remember enjoying Zafon's novel The Angel's Game very, very much.The redeeming quality of this book came at the very end when I realized that the focus of this book was on the depth of Oscar and Marina's friendship and the revelation of Marina's secret that she is the one with the terminal illness and not her father . To me, this is too little and too late.
    • 3/5
      I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.Zafron excels at numerous elements within this book: the viewpoint of an awkward teenage boy in love for the first time, painting the setting of Barcelona as a decaying character itself, and creating a downright creepy mystery. Really, this could be described as young adult horror. It's a fast read. The creepy elements were a bit too creepy for my liking and the first person narrator Oscar came across as rather empty to me.
    • 3/5
      "Marina," the latest novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, was actually published in Spain before "The Shadow of the Wind" and other novels that have proven so popular in their English translations in the United States. Reading it one can see why this earlier story was not translated into English before now. While worth reading, Marina is just not up to the standard American readers have become used to.Set in 1980 in Barcelona, the novel tells of a 15-year-old boy named Oscar stuck unhappily in a boarding school. Wandering the streets one day he meets a lovely girl named Marina and her father, a once great painter who gave up art after the death of his wife. Soon Oscar becomes so involved in their lives that his own life, his own family and his school shrink in importance.All this is fascinating, but then it becomes fantastic as Oscar and Marina's adventures take them, quite literally, into the Barcelona underworld, where a tortured madman, like a 20th century Frankenstein, seeks to reanimate the dead. While all this seems far-fetched, the hardest thing for me to believe was how other characters, including a hardened former police officer, so quickly and seriously accept these two kids as if they were Sam Spade-like investigators, instead of sending them home to their parents.Of course, all of Ruiz Zafon's novels have a bit of the gothic and the fantastic in them. That explains their appeal. "Marina" just seems like too much of a good thing.
    • 3/5
      Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Marina is certainly not his best effort. That being said, i found the book entertaining the first hundred pages. I was intrigued by the way the friendship between Oscar and Marina developed. But, then,Zafon began to "weave" too many "webs" around the main story. I felt it became just to much,making what could have been a good solid YA story , way too complex, not easy to follow and somewhat predictable.Still, a fast read and enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      *I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*A dark tale with all of the elements that Carlos Ruiz Zafon excels at bringing to life. Mystery mixed with a touch of paranormal comes together in this gothic tale of life and death set in Barcelona. Told by Oscar, a 15-year-old who periodically sneaks away from his boarding school and who discovers a multitude of secrets in Barcelona when he encounters the young Marina and her father. Interesting and worth reading, but not as good as Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind.
    • 4/5
      When boarding-school student Oscar Drai meets Marina, she promises him a mystery and takes him to a secret graveyard deep in Barcelona, where they witness a woman dressed in black lay a single rose atop a gravestone etched with a black butterfly. Their curiosity leads them down a dangerous path, and they discover a decades-old conspiracy that puts their lives in the hands of forces more sinister and mystical than they could have believed possible.
    • 4/5
      Bottom line on top: I don't read YA books. When I saw CRZ's name on the ER list, I requested it immediately without reading about it carefully. I find that I'm not able to think myself back into an eleven year-old mindset, so I was pretty dissatisfied with Marina. It's a bit of gothic horror adventure without much else to recommend it except for Zafon's writing, which manages to shine through even in translation, and Barcelona. CRZ's Barcelona is an endlessly fascinating, exotic, seductive place that puts a spell on me as surely as does Venice.Otherwise, he hits every horror-of-its-kind trope.... mysterious, ruined house occupied by mysterious, beautiful people; mysterious, black-cloaked woman who visits mysterious cemetery regularly, leaving a rose on a grave; sewers; inhuman monsters; human monsters; mysterious medical formula; very young love. I'm passing my copy on to a friend who will love it.
    • 4/5
      I loved the atmosphere of Barcelona's past that pervades the book, but I never quite bought the fantastic elements of the story. I think that might be the point. As Oscar recounts his memories of the unbelievable events of his sixteenth year, are these memories real or imagined? Marina has fantastic trappings and a gothic feel, but at its heart it's a very simple story of friendship and the memory of first love. Although this isn't the type of book that usually appeals to me, I was attracted to it because the teenage protagonists are the same age as I was during the novel's time frame. The intensely emotional story will appeal to teen and young adult readers.This review is based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.
    • 3/5
      Marina is subtitled "A Gothic Tale," so I guess that should give you some idea of what to expect. Our narrator is Oscar, a young man who is a student at a boarding school. He stumbles into an overgrown, seemingly abandoned house and leaves with a watch he found there. Finally driven to return it, he meets the occupants of the house, Marina and her father German. From there, mysteries abound - a strange woman in a black veil, the symbol of a black butterfly, a deranged genius from the past.I didn't realize this was a young adult book going in, and it's not a genre I read. I also have no other experience with Zafon, so I just have to judge it on what I read here. The good: Zafon takes "atmospheric" to a whole different level. The city of Barcelona is a character unto itself, and I swore that I could feel the fog in the narrow streets. (This is really two positives - for setting and for writing.)Some of the creepy scenes are truly creepy, even from a more jaded adult perspective. I can imagine certain things in here might keep a young adult reader up at night.If you're going to go gothic, you might as well go full-tilt, with drama galore, and he certainly does that.The bad: The format of "meet someone, have them tell you a story" is effective at communicating information, but maybe not the most involving way to connect us with Oscar and Marina. I never felt like I really got to know either of them all that well.The story takes a while to really get going.So, it comes down overall on the positive side. It's a quick read once you get past the beginning, and it's great for painting mental pictures. Recommended for: the type of person who would take a "ghost tour" of Barcelona, fans of early horror moviesQuote: "We had reached the enchanted Barcelona, the labyrinth of spirits, where the ghosts of time walked behind us."
    • 4/5
      I don't think anything will ever eclipse "Shadow of the Wind," but I did like this one quite a bit. Zafon is a master of mood, plot, character and just sheer ... entertainment? As always, one of the best characters is Barcelona. I'm not really a "gothic" fan, but then, I'm not really sure what "gothic" is. Zafon's writing is poetic in spots and melodramatic in others, but that is part of the fun. I enjoyed the dark, spooky feel of this book. A good one to read come Halloween.
    • 4/5
      I am a big fan of Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I am always drawn in immediately by his writing style. You feel like you are in the middle of a dream. He has a beautiful way of describing the surroundings in his stories. It's as though you are right there, walking down the streets of Barcelona. His stories are so unique with all kinds of twists to his mysterious plots. I find myself racing through his books to see what's going to happen next.Unfortunately for me, Marina makes me feel like I'm in the middle of a nightmare. Marina has all of the elements that I so love about Zafon's books, but with characters that I could only imagine if I was in the middle of a really bad dream. That being said, the book is so well written that I'm not sorry I read it. If you are into Gothic Horror novels, this is a great book!
    • 5/5
      Fifteen year-old Oscar attends a boarding school in Barcelona in 1980. Intrigued by architecture and a sense of adventure, he likes to go explore the abandoned mansions that line the streets near his school. Lured in by a ghostly opera melody, Oscar finds himself in a very much inhabited mansion and unwittingly steals a gold pocket watch. When Oscar finds the courage to return the pocket watch, he finds that the inhabitants of the dilapidated mansion include a girl his age, Marina, and her father, German. Fueled by a shared sense of adventure, Marina leads Oscar to an abandoned graveyard with an unmarked stone that a veiled lady in black visits at the same time once a week, leaving a single red rose. A gothic mystery with a touch of romance and plenty of adventure, Marina provided a good mix that made for a perfect read. The abandoned and forgotten mansions, graveyards and theaters made for a perfect setting, where a mystery is just waiting to be solved. Zafon's writing style adds to the overall mysterious but romantic feeling, a rich, descriptive prose that gave me just enough to get lost in the words and the world that Marina and Oscar had discovered. The friendship and budding romance of Oscar and Marina, is done with a perfect touch, it is not overwhelming and the sense that there is something more to their relationship grown throughout the book to give way to an absolutely heartbreaking ending. While written for teens and with teen characters, Marina reads much like an adult novel. This book definitely makes me want to read my other Zafon books that are sitting on the shelf. This book was received for free in return for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      This was a slow starter for me, and less action-packed than at first I'd hoped, but yes, it's a gothic so the atmosphere and the macabre are what to look for. I actually enjoyed this very much, and was hooked at first by the beautiful language and then second by the mysteries that unravel slowly but enticingly. Sometimes an okay gothic doesn't do justice to its beautiful cover, but this time it did. I'm more than happy keeping this on the shelf to impress company and to re-read. The writing, again, so good that I'm considering getting it in the original. Recommended for fans of the genre wanting a quick, well-written read with some lovely old-Europe atmosphere and enjoyable story.
    • 4/5
      On one of his "excursions" in Barcelona, 15-year-old Oscar Drai meets Marina, who shows him a mysterious ceremony at a hidden cemetery, and when they decide to investigate, the macabre life story of Mijail Kolvenik unfolds in ways nobody could have anticipated. This is an intriguing, and quite creepy, Gothic tale that brings the underworld of Barcelona alive, quite literally, whilst providing more than a few surprisingly gory moments. The storyline feels slightly messy until you wrap your head around the many curious characters that Oscar and Marina encounter and I would even recommend trying to read this in one sitting - it's a YA novel, so it's quite possible - so that the mood stays the same and twist at the end feels close to the hints from the beginning. I liked the characters very much and the mood is spectacular, but it did bother me a little that there were a few threads that weren't tied together at the end - although the ambiguity contributed to the mood, so I can't list that as a complete minus either. In essence, it made me want to rush off and read everything else the author has produced.
    • 4/5
      Zafon is like some sort of crazy chef, insisting on using the same five or six simple ingredients to create a totally different masterpiece each time he works. Here's his ingredient list...- story set in Barcelona with lots of descriptions of old creepy buildings- young wide-eyed protagonist with a lot to learn- an unsolved mystery from the past, typically set around the time of the Spanish Civil War- an authority figure still hanging around trying to solve said mystery- lots of crazy old characters willing to tell all they know in chapter-length chunks of exposition- at least one or two unbelievably gorgeous women, one from the past and one a contemporary of our hero, and with a heart of goldHe takes these ingredients and adds in two or three heartrendingly beautiful passages that, like magic, completely draw the reader into this world that he's created - and it works every time.All of that is present in this early effort from Zafon, and it all works again beautifully, except for the unsolved mystery part, which is the heart of all his stories. This mixed-up retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (he even names one of his old characters Shelley so you're sure to catch on) is so wildly beyond belief that it just never quite rings true enough to achieve the greatness that his other stories have. Thankfully within a couple of years he found the right mystery and created The Shadow of the Wind from the exact same ingredients and achieved perfection.If you're a fan of Zafon's you'll enjoy this early effort that's only recently been translated - prepare to have your heart moved again and again by a master.
    • 4/5
      Gothic is far from my normal reading, in fact, this is probably the first I've ever read. The things I found over the top - the eerie dark atmosphere, macabre scenes, etc are all hallmarks of the genre. Despite all, I found it very well written, the plot engrossing and generally entertaining.