- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (25 Aug 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330390759
- ISBN-13: 978-0330390750
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 525,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Hiding Place
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Trezza Azzopardi's mesmerising debut novel, the Booker-shortlisted The Hiding Place, chronicles the life of a Maltese immigrant family in 1960s Cardiff, Wales, and is a beautifully evocative tale that ignites memories of family, childhood, violence and poverty for one young woman.
Returning to Tiger Bay, Cardiff, for her mother's funeral, Dolores Gauci encounters her sisters for the first time in 30 years after Social Services disbanded them following their father Frankie's abandonment and their mother Mary's attempted suicide. For Dol, aged five when her family is splintered apart, memory is a broken glass pane--a jagged window into the past, permitting only a distorted view and sharp, painful images. Dol remembers the fire, as it licked and then devoured her arm; the rabbit's skin being peeled from flesh,; the self-inflicted scars on her sister's arms; her father's belt cutting into skin.
Sifting through the embers of her childhood, Dol desperately tries to rekindle a flame in her deadened family. Confronting ghosts past and present, she draws a palpable picture of a childhood long-forgotten. Sight, sound, smell and touch caress and burn the reader's senses. Azzopardi questions how Dol, a child at the time, can "remember" and casts into sharp relief the fallibility of the individual's perception of the world--seen from multiple perspectives, there can never be one truth. She revels in disorienting the reader by glimpsing the world from the most unusual, exhilarating angles:
"This is what happens just before I am born: It's 1960. My parents, Frankie and Mary, have five beautiful daughters."
Like an impressionist painter, the author can with just a few simple strokes bring a scene to vibrant life, whether it is the single girls in the bar who leave "the imprints of their bored thighs" remaining "awhile upon the shiny leatherette" or the matchless beauty of the descriptions of Dol's deformity: "a closed white tulip standing in the rain, a church candle with its tears flowing down the bulb of a wrist". Azzopardi's bright flame is sure to burn for a long time to come. --Nicola Perry
Review
A brilliant debut novel shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize set in the Maltese community of Tiger Bay in Cardiff. Dolores, the narrator, tells the story of her childhood and her compulsive gambler father who loses everything to the head of the Maltese Mafia. His gambling leads to a fire that disfigures her and the story flits between past and present as Dolores reflects on her childhood and the lives that her father created for himself and his children.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was a lucky find in the book shop.Attracted by the black and white cover picturing three of the girls, and the brief description, I discovered a book that I enjoyed immensely. I loved the way the book built up towards the end and then came back to the present to answer some of the issues left open. It also left me shifting through the information in my head to piece together everything I had read - to me, this is the sign of a really good book.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Trezza Azzopardi's first book is a raw collection of memories of what today would be called a dysfunctional childhood, but in the '60s was the familys' own business. I don't know if this is a sign of good writing, but although I have never been to Malta, or Cardiff for that matter, I felt as though I had lived exactly the life that the author describes. Some of the recollections are truly shocking and yet I was not shocked, it seemed part of the life the reader was involved in, albeit a million miles from my own life. Interwoven were subtle references that made sense of what had already been read, making a sudden, sometimes stomach wrenching sense.It may be a cliche, but I truly could not put this book down until I had finished and I cannot imagine Trezza Azzopardi having any more in her to share with us, I can only hope she does.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
British first-time novelist Trezza Azzopardi stuns with her accomplished portrait of childhood deprivation, a terrain where want goes begging and kindness is stillborn.
With a rundown immigrant enclave in Cardiff, Wales, as its setting, The Hiding Place is the story of the Gauci family. Father Frankie, whose "love is Chance" is a Maltese seaman. A selfish, unrepentant child abuser and thief, he values an inherited ruby ring more than his daughters whom he barters for a stake.
His wife, Mary, the mother of six girls, is sometimes forced to sell herself for rent money. Madness is her escape from an intolerable existence.
Related in the voice of the youngest child, Dolores, the saga of this family causes readers to ponder the vagaries of birth and life's inequities. As adults, each daughter is haunted by a painful past, days in which their diversions were hopscotch in a dusty alley or inflicting cruelty upon one another until they are relegated to foster care.
Ms. Azzopardi's evocation of the littered byways and musty bars of a small dockside community is flawless, as are her portraits of those we meet there. A finalist for the coveted Booker Prize, The Hiding Place is a trenchant, superbly crafted tragedy. It is a bleak but dazzling book.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Beautifully Haunting and Evocative Novel
I don't know why I haven't come across this book before, but I'm very glad that I found this whilst browsing on Amazon. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Susie B
Disturbing and unresolved
A story one hopes wouldn't happen today-Dolores is one of five daughters of a Maltese immigrant living in Cardiff who is subject to terrible abuse by her father and not protected... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Anne
A strange but beautiful book
The first ten pages may baffle you, but persevere: it's worth it. This is a beautifully written book of great sadness, the slow-moving, perhaps, but unstoppable story of a woman... Read more
Published on 3 July 2008 by zen dog
Wonderful but sad book
Trezza Azzopardi was recommended to me by a colleague, this is the first of her books that I've read and I found it a gripping, beautifully-written read. Read more
Published on 31 July 2007 by Love Books
Exellent Read
This is an excellent book, well written, emotional, with a tint of reality. Tezza is a master in character building and narration. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2006 by Joseph Farrugia
Maybe it's a cultural thing
This book is an incredible achievement for a first novel, even when you consider that the author studied for the MA in Creative Writing at UEA. Read more
Published on 5 April 2006
Sorry but I just dont get it
What I don't get is what all the hype is about. It just left me cold. Try as I might I couldn't develop an attachment for any of the characters except for the narrator. Read more
Published on 19 Aug 2005
Just finished
Just completed this strange novel. I enjoyed the story even though it was hearbreaking. The characters were very well drawn and there are quite a lot of them. Read more
Published on 22 Nov 2001 by das1@lineone.net
A fine first novel
It's a relief to be able to write positively about a first-time novelist. Azzopardi's taken the safest route and written something that is obviously leavened with autobiography. Read more
Published on 15 July 2001
Terrific debut, terrific writing but didn't enthrall me
I really wanted to read and enjoy this book. The writing was, as promised quite outstanding and admirable in its quality, but for me that's all it was. Read more
Published on 2 July 2001
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