The Angel’s Game is a novel of adventure, intrigue and romance written by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It was published in 2008 and was a huge success. The book is about a writer called David Martín, who one day is commissioned to write an almost impossible book.
Summary of El juego del Ángel
The Angel’s Game begins with the story of the protagonist, David Martin, an adult in his thirties who lost his father in his early thirties and whose mother doesn’t know him. When he was no more than ten years old, he liked her very much, but his father wouldn’t let him, and she hurt him very much. A novel that might interest you is Dead Houses.
When his father died to survive, David Martin started to work for a newspaper company and during his work he made friends with a rich young man in Spain at that time (1920-1930) called Pedro Vidal, David Martin dreamed of being a writer and Pedro Vidal’s influence makes David Martin write in the newspaper, he starts to write a series of stories called City of the Damned, when David Martin starts to write in the newspaper his friends have David Martin fired.
After being fired, Vidal gets a job as a writer with a pair of hustlers called Brooms and Sweeping, which pays him a pittance while making him a fortune, except that his name does not appear on the books he publishes. David Martin fell in love with Cristina, the daughter of Pedro Vidal’s chauffeur. David Martin wrote several more great books, and many of his friends tried to persuade him to go to the doctor, like Mr Sempere, Barcelo and Vidal.
But it was only when he could no longer concentrate and was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour, and so much so that after a year of life, when David Martin tried to continue the work and he still had no contract with them, so that he still had years to dissuade him and continue writing, they proposed to him that he write a book, but about what text he was already obliged to write about the stories that they published in the newspaper and David Martin, who was already thirty years old at that time and he did not like writing about stories, gave him a year to write.
One day Cristina arrived, who was now Vidal’s secretary, very worried because Pedro Vidal was writing a book, but it was a book that was not good, so Cristina proposed to David Martín that he rewrite the two of them, and he accepted David and Cristina worked with pleasure for a long time until Cristina’s father fell ill and decided to take him to a sanatorium on the outskirts of Spain until he died.
In The Angel’s Game Some time later, David finishes the two books without Vidal’s understanding, and they are now published, but only the one called Vidal is successful. Then a mysterious French publisher called Andreas Corelli contacts David, with information that he can talk to him in a week’s time. You must read The Foreigner.
When David talks about Corelli, they always come up with an angel pin, saying that Corelli has cancelled contracts with the book and schools after a book for the religion of the book and the wealth of writing that book, David. However, he wants to accept the explanation that he has little time to live, but Corelli says he can fix it, and that night, without saying anything to David, Corelli is said to have taken the tumour and Corelli killed brushes and debris.
Some time before Sempere was taught in David’s The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where David received a book called Lux Aeterna for the death of Sweeper and Brush, David Martin begins to be interrogated by an officer named Grandes, who begins to suspect something. A recommended novel is The Brothers Karamazov.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDWMqs2lqW0
The second part is that while he was writing the book for Corelli, an assistant called Isabella, a seventeen year old girl with dreams of becoming a writer, helped him with his research for the book for which Corelli received his salary. One day, while David was reading Lux Aeterna, the report written on the same typewriter, David began a series of investigations about the former owner of the house where he lived, the more investigations, the more mysterious facts.
In the Angel’s Game, David manages to discover that the previous owner was Diego Marlasca and that he had drowned. Marlasca had been a lawyer of great prestige, but as he had a dead son, his wife and I were obsessed with talking to his spirit, in one of the sessions he meets a woman who Irene Sabino told him that he said it with two other men wanted to deceive Marlasca and they did.
Among the enquiries David made was that Marlasca had taken time off work to do a very rare book for a French publisher, but no one would give him any concrete information. While David was getting more information, Officer Grandes was hot on his heels. If you want to read young adult fiction, I recommend The Sound and the Fury.
While David was trying to find more information to visit Marlasca’s world, but not getting much information at night, the officer knocked on David’s door and arrested a suspect for the death of Marlasca’s former spiritualist.
The letter said that they had tried not to get into too much trouble. Ignoring Corelli’s letter, David decides to go and see Marlasca’s ex-wife, who tells him that the police didn’t look much into the case, but there was one policeman who wanted to investigate further, but the one who gave his name was Ricardo Salvador. When David meets Salvador, he tells him about the inconsistencies in the story, but he can’t do much about it.
One day Cristina comes to David’s house very sad, Vidal is gone, David tells her that he wants to be with her and that he wants her to stay with him, which she accepts, but the dice are too far away and David accepts. The next day, when they go to buy the train tickets, they pass the Sempere bookshop, because earlier David and Isabella had made a plan, because the bookshop was bankrupt and David had a fortune.
But Mr Sempere would not take money, so Isabella worked in the bookshop and in the house so that someone would buy him a book, and she sent him extra money to keep the bookshop going. When David returns home, he finds that Cristina is no longer there. Some time later someone knocked on the door and David, thinking it was Cristina, opened the door with a sad face: Mr Sempere, who had been one of David’s closest friends, had died.
When David wanted to talk to the former Mrs Marlasca he couldn’t, because when he visited her she was dead and David understood that someone was trying to silence the truth about Marlasca. One day, while looking for Cristina, he met one of Vidal’s employees, David asked him if Cristina had said anything before she disappeared, and he told him that he had this strange detail from his father, moments later.
He went to the sanatorium where Cristina’s father was, here they only let him see Cristina when they knew who he was, because Cristina had talked a lot about David, but she had brain damage and had come to in very brief moments when David saw her sitting in a chair, not talking, not moving, not doing anything. David stayed there for many days, waiting for Cristina to regain consciousness.
When Cristina regained consciousness, she told David that she wanted to burn the manuscript of the book for Corelli, but there was someone else in the house and he hit her on the head. David thought that Cristina was delirious. Tired of waiting, David decided to free Cristina and managed to get into the sanatorium unnoticed, when David entered the room she was not there, she had escaped through the window.
David followed the trail of blood left by Cristina to a frozen lake where the ice behind Cristina began to break up, David had already seen her and was close to her but as he was about to reach the ice it opened and Cristina quickly fell into the lake and seconds later the ice closed without David being able to hit the ice to free Cristina but only the second sank.
When David returned to continue his investigation of Marlasca and turned to another part of his spiritualist who said she was a witch when David had her with him, she told him that Marlasca had killed her to keep his secrets but before talking to her. David had found a sculpture and a gravestone in the cemetery with her name on it. Some time later, David spoke to Isabella and she told him that Mr Sempere had talked about a book before he died, the book David Martin had written.
When David looked for the Corelli manuscript he kept in a box with other things, he didn’t find it, but he did find the angel brooch on Corelli’s lapel and a match on the floor, then remembered what Christina had told him before she died. Sad that the gun his father had left was a legacy, his Corelli house was run, and this would have been part of his last game. A novel you might be interested in is The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
When David entered the room without Corelli, but saw that no one was left with Corelli’s room, but no one saw him, the battery fell short and broke. head, but as he approached the account that the blood did not come out, he left a very fine sand until it was not a person, it was a puppet, David under the earth where the operation had taken him and found the puppets of Corelli’s flat, the butler and of him.
David returns to investigate The Angel’s Game with the lawyer Valera, the one who says that the father who knew Marlasca did the transactions, that Marissa had the book before the one who didn’t looked for it in his house. When David went to lawyer Valera’s house, he found him dead, but with the notebook he said contained the information about the transactions in his hand.
In The Angel’s Game the notebook said that he had made transactions with Irene Sabino and the witch that David had spoken of, after seeing the notebook David felt that he was more lost than ever, but when he discovered a reading room with Valera and some of his friends, David that it has become one of the oldest in the world.
In David’s house there was a room that smelled funny, but David never went to look for it, less so on the day when it was a room and he looked for the source of the smell, which was something he had behind a cupboard He blocked the wall, but before David could do anything, Officer Grandes came in and arrested him. Grandes insists that he tell the whole truth until David agrees and tells everything except Cristina at the end of the story.
Grandes, incredulous at what he has said, allows him to escape to prove his story of having hidden his father’s revolver, and does so, managing to escape. When the sale goes to Irene Sabino’s house in search of Marlasca, when he finds her he has taken a vial of poison and before he dies that Marla liked, he had robbed Sempere and before he can leave the officers building but the others.
David uses his father’s revolver to escape from the politicians who have managed to hurt him, with nowhere to go he takes a taxi to the house of Pedro Vidal who gives him clothes, a room and heals his wounds, Vidal told him to help him escape and give him money, also the one who already had the book written by David and also explained that the officer Grandes had deceived him, let him escape and then killed him, saying that he was resisting arrest and revealed the truth about the death of David’s father.
David’s father had been killed because he had been mistaken for Vidal, who had been in trouble for seeing someone’s wife. While David was unprepared, Vidal grabbed his father’s revolver and by the time David realised that Vidal was already shooting, seconds later Vidal fell against the wall. David quickly grabs the revolver, uses one of Vidal’s cars, but when he sells the garage, he realises that things are too expected and David speeds away.
But it also has consequences for Martin, he brakes and causes a crash, but reacts quickly and drives the car to the cable car tower, where the cable can be closed but not shot at, but David refuses to shoot at the telephone tower, killing David, he then manages to get Big out of the cable car, but he had already reached the tower, so Big fell into the gears and was crushed by them. David then leaves the cable car and goes home.
At home David searches again behind the wardrobe where he discovers that there is a secret room, the room was so dark that David has a spotlight, when we enter to see that someone was tied up in a chair facing the corner was Ricardo Salvador who was imprisoned by Diego Marlasca, when David scratched him with his fingers Salvador turned to ashes.
When David was about to leave he noticed Marlasca waiting for him and when he saw him he said he could not stop eating, he pulled out a knife and David managed to defend himself until he knocked him down and ended up throwing the lighthouse and Marlasca began to burst into flames, Marlasca fell into a pile of clothes and ignited behind the wardrobe and then the ceiling, then David managed to leave without anyone noticing him, finally he passed by the bookshop Sempere where he found Isabella doing the accounts and before she hid I saw him and made it come true.
Isabella said that the bookshop failed to overcome the accounts, also dice to be paid with Sempere, David told her that he was leaving and gives her the envelope you took. to Great before taking it out of the cable car and handing it over as an advanced wedding present. Isabella accompanies him until the boat that David is leaving takes off.
Chapter summary for The Angel’s Game
One chapter of The Angel’s Game begins with a British explorer, years later, reading the chronicle of his first visit to the Tower House in Flassaders Street, deep in the darkness of an ancient Egyptian tomb with labyrinths and curses. An interesting novel is Gulliver’s Travels.
This is similar, or perhaps it is an honour to the previous hundred years of separation, which says that exuberant years later, in front of the firing squadron, Colonel Aureliano Buendia of recalling that remote afternoon when his artificer took him to check the ice.
But while the first is a syntactical flow that shows only one similarity, the house is like a cry, the other is a good sentence. There is an irreversible mystery, a biographical intrigue, in the fact that García Márquez’s character remembers the ice when he is facing death. And what he had of it, limited to the preterit and the obligation to remember, is wonderfully unexpected (Zafón uses “would have, syntactically impeccable and artistically insignificant”).
It is in details like these that we recognise a great novelist. And although the idea of value is always in the air, excellence establishes its own rules. Zafón does not need to play in the big leagues, to ally himself with illustrious predecessors or established traditions. You have to write a sentence like García Márquez. And then a thousand others.
Explanation of The Angel’s Game
Diego Marlasca pretends to commit suicide because he is a lawyer, and who knows how difficult things have been, and he is a writer for Lux Aeterna, and he leaves his wife to go to Irene Sabino and live in the house where David Martin now lives. The identity he pursues is that of Ricardo Salvador. The one who wants to kill the protagonist is Diego Marlasca, because Martin discovers that his identity is what is condemned in the city, like a book in another.
There is a passage where he is describing Correlli, where I realise that he is talking about the reader, from that passage I identified with the one who calls him the patron (and who is the reader-writer of the game), note that he is the one who orders the story, we are the readers who ask the writers for their stories, what happens is that he mixes it a bit with religion, what he says about it seems barbaric.
The end is the reader, the patron, the one who can rescue the moment when Cristina is little and give it to her, the end is a bit sub-realistic, only the reader can take the story back, read it again. That’s what I think, but of course there are other opinions, and everyone’s opinion will be different from mine, because that’s the game that has been set for each reader, the subjectivity of the story, a great Zafón.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6Jphb_lds
Opinions on The Angel’s Game
This work by Zafón, The Angel’s Game, is very different from the story of the previous work, but it is the same in some of the characteristics of the characters, as well as in their personalities. My favourite character is the protagonist, David Martin, and he is my favourite character because of his personality, which is brave, calm and at the same time a trickster. This work is not my favourite Zafón, but it is one of the best he writes.
Characters of The Angel’s Game
David Martín: He has a taste for reading and, thanks to the bookseller, I introduce him to the Tomb of Books, named after the forgotten books. From his beginnings he was very humble and went from being an intern in social communication to being a great writer, even a very successful one, but he feels he is losing control of his life. You can’t miss reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Andreas Corelli: He has a secret and is described as a sinister publisher who makes David write great books in order to achieve success.
Pedro Vidal: In The Angel’s Game he is one of the people protecting David Martin, he is part of a wealthy family in the city. He longs to be a writer, but he knows he doesn’t have the talent of his protégé.
Cristina Sagnier: David Martin is in love with Cristina, but she grew up with Vidal, to whom her father is in debt. Their relationship is tortuous.
Isabela: A very young and vivacious assistant to David Martin, whom she adores and is guided by.
Sentences from The Angel’s Game
“I don’t trust people who think they have lots of friends. It’s a sign that they don’t know other people.”: Friendship Saying.
“As a general rule, the more talented you are, the more suspicious you will be of it.”: Life quote
“I missed you too much. I didn’t want to, but I did”: love phrases.
“Your laughter promised me a paradise I have yet to find”: Falling in love phrases
Plot of The Angel’s Game
The book is about a writer called David Martin, who one day is commissioned to write an almost impossible book, something he’s never done before, and although he doesn’t care too much about it at first, he decides to write it. But when he started writing it, strange things started to happen to the book and the house he was living in. Like one night when a woman called Irene Sabino, who was the lover of the former owner of the house, turned up.
The writer also had a secret love, Cristina Vidal. One day David discovered that Cristina was in an asylum, and as much as he wanted to take Cristina with him, the director of the asylum would not let him, although he could keep her. Before all this, David met Isabella, who eventually became his secretary, and they became inseparable. One night, when he returned home, David found something behind his wardrobe, something soft and he thought it was hollow.
It was something unimaginable: it was a triangular room with a handball at the bottom. The field was full of something that looked like dust, but when he touched it, he saw that it was legs. So the character was responsible for the book and wanted to kill David so that the two of them would be in a very strong game where I let David win.
After this battle, The Angel’s Game, David left home, but not before saying goodbye to Isabella and Daniel Sempere at the bookshop. When it was finished, he left the city for a cottage near the beach, where he continued to write.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYboLxEejsE
Actualizado el 6 May, 2024
