Bernarda is a wonderful housekeeper to the protagonists and when they employ a tramp to work in their bookshop, he falls in love with her. The courtship is part of the beauty of the book.  I like the notion of something being ‘thick enough to spread on toast’.

‘Bernarda affected a ceremonial tone that could not conceal a Cáceres accent thick enough to spread on toast.’

See also our celebration of this book, complete with a mosaic of illustrated quotations and metaphors.

Source: Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, trans. Lucia Graves (London: Phoenix, 2012), p. 36

Photo credit: Jonathan Pielmayer at unsplash.com