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Overview
The young cousins at the center of this gripping novel know they are different from their playmates. Their dark eyes alone set them apart. And as they look at family photo-graphs, the blank spaces between the pictures lead them to wonder about their mysterious past.
Who is the beautiful opera singer, the woman with "Italian eyes"? What happened to their grandfather, a pilot with a secret Luftwaffe unit in the Spanish Civil War? Could he still be alive? And why does his second wife forbid the children to speak of the family's history?
Questions become suspicions, secrets and rumors become wild insinuations. Combining clues from their own lives with traces of their family's past, the young detectives move from generation to generation. As fact and fiction merge into one, it slowly becomes clear that the truth is maddeningly elusive in this evocative, lyrical, and engrossing tale.
Synopsis
The young cousins at the center of this gripping novel know they are different from their playmates. Their dark eyes alone set them apart. And as they look at family photo-graphs, the blank spaces between the pictures lead them to wonder about their mysterious past.
Who is the beautiful opera singer, the woman with "Italian eyes"? What happened to their grandfather, a pilot with a secret Luftwaffe unit in the Spanish Civil War? Could he still be alive? And why does his second wife forbid the children to speak of the family's history?
Questions become suspicions, secrets and rumors become wild insinuations. Combining clues from their own lives with traces of their family's past, the young detectives move from generation to generation. As fact and fiction merge into one, it slowly becomes clear that the truth is maddeningly elusive in this evocative, lyrical, and engrossing tale.
The Washington Post - Ron Charles
The tragedy of this poetic novel is that even when the "most fervent wish is to cease remembering," truly thoughtful people can't, though remembering offers no solace.
Editorials
Ron Charles
The tragedy of this poetic novel is that even when the "most fervent wish is to cease remembering," truly thoughtful people can't, though remembering offers no solace.— The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
The nameless narrator of Beyer's (The Karnau Tapes) new novel has a fondness for peepholes: he relishes obscured glimpses and colors he's unable to see with his imagination ("What I can't see I must invent"). As a child, the narrator and his three cousins follow a similar path in their search for the truth about their estranged grandfather and dead grandmother, the origin of the dark "Italian" eyes shared by all four children. What begins as an innocent game of make-believe-four children poring over mysteriously sparse family albums and wandering about town in search of evidence-becomes a full-fledged obsession for each, and the stake that drives them apart as adults. Was their grandmother truly a famous opera singer? Did their grandfather really participate in a secret German air force operation during the Spanish Civil War? Why does his second wife forbid him from seeing his family, and is she really the fearsome, ax-wielding "Old Lady" of legend? It becomes impossible to separate fact from fiction in Beyer's twisting, elusive tale as multiple versions of the same story collide in the narrator's imagination. For anyone who doesn't demand a firm resolution, this love story wrapped in a drama wrapped in a mystery is a lovely, gratifying read. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.New York Sun
"A very unusual kind of spy novel"
New York Times Book Review
"Spies...is satisfyingly rich in mysteries"
Publishers Weekly
"This love story wrapped in a drama wrapped in a mystery is a lovely gratifying read."Washington Post Book World
"Brillant and unsettling"