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Trezza
Azzopardi's first novel, THE HIDING PLACE, is many things: a thoughtful
and luminous meditation on the bonds of family; a stark depiction
of life in an impoverished ethnic neighborhood of Cardiff, Wales;
and a window into the mind of Dolores Gauci, a girl crippled by
horrible burns. But more than any of these things --- and perhaps
the aspect of this book that makes it infinitely worthy of its ranking
among the likes of Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, and the rest
of this year's Booker Prize shortlist nominees --- THE HIDING PLACE
is a brilliant literary rendering of the ebb and flow of human memory.
This novel changes perspective constantly, shifting from Dolores's
memories of her childhood (slippery and changeable things, as childhood
memories are) to her father's flashbacks of his arrival in Wales
to third-person accounts of the actions of minor characters. All
of these diverse perspectives are woven together in such a masterful
and entirely natural way that we never question the author's intent.
Instead, we watch as Dolores reconstructs the tragic events of her
childhood by piecing together her own memories along with the "truths"
told to her by her sisters, parents, and neighbors.
The tale of the Gauci family is certainly not a happy one. Rather,
this novel has aptly earned comparison with ANGELA'S ASHES for painting
a rather dismal portrait of life in the United Kingdom. Frank Gauci
is a violent, absent father to his six girls, most of whom are named
with feminized versions of boys' names, a symbol of their parents'
unfulfilled wish for sons. Their mother, Mary, mourns greatly for
the dissolution of her family --- Frank barters off their daughter
Marina to local don Joe Medora when he finds himself in financial
straits; daughter Fran is sent to a home for troubled children when
her pyromania turns into criminal arson; 17 year old Celesta is
married off to an unctuous 40-year-old soda pop merchant; and infant
Dolores is irreversibly scarred by a fire. This is certainly a dark
tale. Frank eventually schemes a way to pay for his escape from
Wales, and abandoned and without money, Mary witnesses the complete
breakdown of her family: her remaining three daughters, Dolores,
Rose, and Luca are sent off to different foster families. The girls
all grow up separated from one another and only reunite many years
later for Mary's funeral, an event that is far from a cheery Hallmark
ending to this bleak and sobering novel.
THE HIDING PLACE is composed entirely of short paragraphs and brief
passages; this is certainly not a novel modeled after Trollope or
Austen, Updike or Irving. Rather, Ms. Azzopardi has managed to create
an entirely "novel" sort of novel. Images surface and recede rather
quickly, yet Azzopardi's writing is so good, so succinct and vivid
that it does not require long discursive explanation. In a few,
humble lines Azzopardi depicts the adult Dolores's thoughts upon
entering her dead mother's house, and so demonstrates the lasting
impressions that other lives make upon our own: "Here's the living
room with the bed, the tea-towel, an armchair, a television set
perched on a table in the corner. Next to the gas fire is a brass
coal scuttle wedged with magazines: Word Search, The Puzzler,
Take a Break. A biro gathers dust in the corner of the hearth.
On the mantelpiece is a scuffed blue spectacle case. I cannot touch
any of it ... A month ago --- two weeks ago --- my mother breathed
in this space. She moved in it, watched television at night with
the sound down low, a magazine in her lap and a pen in her hand."
Few first novels make it to the ranks of Booker Prize nominees.
But, then, THE HIDING PLACE does not read like a first novel. It
is a confident, perfect, original world that Azzopardi creates in
these pages with her effortless and mesmerizing prose.
--- Reviewed by Meredith Blum
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