Wordie Wednesday | Lizard People, Charlie Price

(Day 25/30 of the 30 day blog challenge. Read more about it here!)

I’ve got to be honest– I would have never read this book had I not found it at Marden’s.  Marden’s, for all of you non-Mainers, is a fantastic salvage chain.  It can be kind of hit or miss, but when you score, you score– I’m still thrilled about the $100+ running windbreaker that I scored for $30 or $40.  Winning!  A few weeks ago Tony and I happened to be at the Ellsworth Marden’s (the one with the best selection of books), so I went through and picked up a few of the most interesting ones.  Lizard People was only a couple of dollars and had a reasonably interesting premise, so I figured that if it was awful, I was only out two dollars.

Our narrator, Ben, has a mentally ill mother who believes that the “lizard people” are out to take over the world and has psychotic breaks in which she paints herself red to keep them away from her (the lizards hate the color red).  Ben, who is in high school, is the only one around to take care of her; his father has recently checked out of their lives.  She really needs to be institutionalized, or at least watched over closely, but the money isn’t there and Ben needs to attend school.

One day, while Ben is in the waiting room waiting to hear from his mother’s doctor, he meets Marco, a boy who also has a mentally ill mother.  What’s weird, however, is that he tells Ben that he’s been to the future, where the humans have lizard names and sometimes look a bit reptilian… Is Marco telling the truth, or has he inherited his mother’s illness?

As the summary suggests, this book is definitely strange, and Marco’s story is even more curious.  It’s definitely interesting, however, how Price allows us into the mind of an individual who may be having a mental break, but also may be exploring learning about the year 4000.  In a sense, the reader doesn’t know if what he or she is reading is realistic fiction or science fiction/fantasy, which is somewhat awkward, but works here.

This is a short novel (I’d go so far to call it a novella), so it’s worth picking it up for a quick read.  Enjoy!