Great Little Reads: Lizard

The next Great Little Read I tackled was Lizard by Leonore Schick. The list of the ingredients on the back tells us to expect: coming of age, selective memory, magical realism and lizards - technically an accurate summary of the contents.

Just before travelling to work as an au pair on some unnamed, but presumably nice and warm, island, Eliza discovers a patch of reptilian, scaly skin on her leg. This is understandably a little troubling for her and she goes to great lengths to try to hide if from her hosts and their kids, something that proves problematic in a hot climate where much of the time is spent on the beach or in the sea.

But these concerns are as nothing compared to the worrying fact that she can now hear the lizards on the island speaking, and some of them are talking to her. The boundaries between the human and lizard worlds become blurred and neither Eliza, nor the reader, can be entirely sure what is fantasy and what is reality.

This is a brave and ambitious novel which suggests the influence, by turns, of Kafka and Fowles. It would be remarkable if Schick were able to emulate these greats in her first published work, and she doesn't. The prose is bizarre and a bit muddled in places but there are moments of brilliance and, while reading Lizard, you do feel as if you are witnessing the early stages of an interesting writing career. An intriguing curiosity.

The Great Little Reads series is published by Roast Books.

Comments

[jem]

This was the other one I fancied, but now I don't. Oh well, one to watch for the future perhaps.