Spanish Fiction: Cut off a lizard's tail and another grows back - this is the organic metaphor of renewal which Juan Marsé uses to describe his haunting novel of love, despair and indomitable optimism during the grey years of early Francoist Spain.
Part of the long tradition of picaresque literature in Spain, the book's action is set in the down-trodden Carmelo district of Barcelona in the months following the end of the second World War. For Spaniards, this was a time of repression, hunger and hardship, especially for those, like the family in Marsé's novel, who supported the losing side in the civil war.
The author's working title for the book was apparently Voices in the Gully, which captures beautifully the desperate solitude that marks the life of his characters. There is young David, facing the imminent arrival of a sibling and finding the co-ordinates of his world disappearing; his heavily pregnant mother, affectionately known as the "Red-Head", who struggles valiantly to keep the household together; his absent father, on the run from the authorities for politically-subversive activities; and inspector Galván, who is in love with David's mother, yet charged with tracking down his father. If David is a delightful and lively mind accompanying the reader through the book, then Galván is an intriguing figure. He symbolizes the authority of the Regime, but is beset by all-too-human desires which lead to contradictory behaviour; he is cruel to David but tender to his mother. This nuanced depiction of a figure of authority is evidence, alongside works by younger writers such as Manuel Rivas and Javier Cercas, of Spain's present cultural reassessment of the Franco era.
In a magnificent celebration of the optimistic power of the imagination, Marsé also gives voice to a series of ghostly or unreal personages who offer a glimmer of hope in this degraded world. The unborn baby, who teases and cajoles David from inside the womb, represents the fighting spirit that will see the characters through to better days. Lieut Bryan O'Fl-ynn, an RAF pilot shot down by the Germans whose picture David keeps on his wall, inspires the child by boldly facing death with a legendary English "stiff upper lip". And David's sickly dog Chispa becomes the centre of his loving ministrations and constant source of companionship.
This is both a poetic and a down-to-earth book. Linguistically, Marsé combines gentle lyricism with the gritty slang of 1940s Barcelona. The harshness of life and the isolation of his characters is juxtaposed with a finely-balanced sense of humour and tenderness. Aware, for instance, that his senile grandmother is obsessed with Amanda, a young girl from her past, David visits her pretending to be Amanda so that granny can fulfil her fantasy. Then again, does he just imagine himself pretending? Such is the ambiguity of the novel that the reader can't be sure, but it doesn't matter, for the most important thing in this solitary and divided society is that, momentarily, the worlds of the characters are allowed to overlap and communication becomes a possibility.
Alison Ribeiro de Menezes is a lecturer in Spanish at University College Dublin, and is currently preparing a study of the contemporary novelist, Juan Goytisolo
- Lizard Tails By Juan Marsé Translated by Nick Caistor Harvill 231 pp, £10.99