Lizard Tails (2000)

It's the imagination of a boy dealing with the disconnection and disappearance of his father that drive the story set in post World War II Spain. There is a great deal of uncertainty after the Spanish Civil War and then after World War II. There is still an oppressive regime with people going missing and conspiracies by the government against those who supported the opposing regime. It seems that David and his mother, the red-head, are adrift with no direction or hope.

The story is actually told by a fetus. David’s mother is pregnant and they both speak to her pregnant belly, David in a more animated way (calling him leech and other unpleasant names). David has an active imagination and his discussions with imaginary characters take up most of the story. His disappeared drunk father, an Irish fighter pilot shot down during World War II, David’s unborn brother, and a few others join the discussion. Using this technique Marse explains many of the problems and anxieties of post war Spain. David increasingly goes into his own little world with only his friend Paulino to talk to. He also must deal with a nosy police detective hunting his father while courting his mother. The absence of his father (even though he was a drunk) creates a large burden for both him and his mother, resulting in the mother relying on the detective in more than a formal way. This also results in David’s increasing resentment and hatred of the detective. That resentment results in the worst betrayal and in a land where one must balance resistance from a corrupt and oppressive government with survival the betrayal could be fatal for all of them.

I really enjoyed this story and would compare it with one of my favorites, The Shadow of the Wind. It is that lost and searching feeling and the post war Spain feeling, with its history of broken dreams. All in all, there is this feeling of loss and helplessness that pervade the story.

This was the opening skirmish in a baleful moment from which neither of them emerged unscathed, although neither started it on purpose: it simply grew out of a file kept somewhere deep in the archives of hatred and betrayal. P 2

...what I see and what I don't see are one and the same. P 5

At that moment I was poised on the threshold of life, but only a step away from death, my back turned to the world, and probably upside down. P 39

What good did thinking do you, poor little lizard? Who chooses the twists you are making, what brain thinks them, if you haven't got a head anymore? P 47

...a blackened face and a smile that is the smile of someone still flying, thinks David as he stuffs the photo under his shirt, someone whose plane may have been destroyed, but not his courage or his belief in victory, or his fighting spirit which is still soaring high in the skied, above the clouds and beyond the lightning storms and the artillery, there where the sun always shines... P 70

Your mother never lies, Pa grumbles. But since these days the truth has to creep around, like the muddy trickle if the waters of the river in the morning mist-- I see it every day, and there's nothing whatsoever poetic about it, I can tell you--then sometimes we have to use lies to recover our lost dignity. P 86

Pa told me one day learn to watch for what hasn't happened yet and you'll learn a lot. 124

Now I realize that it was having to live alone and poor for years, and putting up with the situation without complaint, that forged my mother's sensibility, her secret harmony with the world, even her romantic daydreams and her restless sexuality; whenever the mysteries of life leave me feeling defenseless and lonely, I think of her, and the thought brings me the miraculous consolation of her vulnerability and her strength. In his own way, David also accepted this contradiction: as if he knew the truth does not exist, only the wish to discover it, he fought not against truth itself, but against the fragility of its appearance. P219 ( )