Product Description

"A scalding, thrilling book" - "Observer". Set in the Maltese community of Tiger Bay, and peopled with sharp-edged, luminously drawn characters, "The Hiding Place" is the story of Frank Gauci, his wife Mary, and their six daughters. Through the eyes of Dolores, the youngest daughter, we see the underworld of 1960's Cardiff, a life of gaming rooms and cafes, of crumbling houses and burning secrets which tear this family apart. Thirty years on, a reunion with her estranged sisters brings Dolores face to face with the betrayals which have haunted her past, where the truth is finally and tragically played out. "An extraordinarily instinctive write with a delicate feel for language...Azzopardi has written a scalding, thrilling book about the havoc and despair it is possible to wreak inside a family" - "Observer". ""The Hiding Place" manages to be heart-breaking without being sentimental. Fans of Kate Atkinson and Andrea Ashworth will love this Read and weep" - "Mirror". ""The Hiding Place" is an accomplished and courageous debut...In its sheer strangeness and poetic charge, the novel sometimes recalls other literary one-offs such as "Wuthering Heights"". - "Times Literary Supplement". "A gripping tale, horrifying and often funny. This relationship between girls, who must fight to survive, is brilliantly evoked". - Marie Claire, "Book of the month".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122499 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 250 pages

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.

From the Publisher
A heart-breaking story of a family's secrets
Trezza Azzopardi's original and compelling first novel is a tragedy played out in the docks of Cardiff's Tiger Bay. It is the story of the Gauci family, told through the child's eyes of Dolores, the youngest of 5 daughters who watches the family's secrets, slowly revealed. Dolores's view is at once naive and disorientating, leading the reader into the recesses of this unfamiliar world. The Hiding Place is a profoundly touching and beautifully written debut.

‘A gripping tale, horrifying and often funny . . . The relationship between the girls, who must fight to survive, is brilliantly evoked’ Marie Claire, Book of the Month

‘Azzopardi is an assured magician when it comes to tricks to keep the readers turning the pages . . . An astonishingly accomplished book’ Independent

‘An extraordinarily instinctive writer with a delicate feel for language . . . Azzopardi has written a scalding, thrilling book about the havoc and despair it is possible to wreak inside a family' Maggie O’Farrell, Observer

‘Keenly observed, full of small quiet details that capture the harum-scarum lives of Dolores and her family’ Elle, must-read

‘The Hiding Place manages to be heart-breaking without being sentimental. Fans of Kate Atkinson and Andrea Ashworth will love this. Read it and weep.’ Mirror

‘Accomplished . . . [It] proceeds at a cracking pace, full of neat but unobtrusive gestures at the horrors beneath . . . Sharply written, full of crisp little vignettes and cameos’ DJ Taylor, Guardian

‘The Hiding Place is an accomplished and courageous debut. The setting is original and Azzopardi’s approach to her characters is expressionistic. In its sheer strangeness and poetic charge, the novel sometimes recalls other literary one-offs such as Wuthering Heights’ Rupert Shortt, TLS

Customer Reviews

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. One aspect of the book is that I thought it tied up the story very well at the end, but now knowing how the characters turn out I really want to read the book again, and pick up all the subtle characterisation clues which I missed in my rush to find their destiny. But the point is that I never re-read books, so s this book very different, or am I just getting lazy ?

Loved this book, couldn't put it down. Eagerly awaiting more
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.

It left me cold
Try as I might, I just can't see what all the fuss is about. This book was short-listed for the Booker Prize 2000, and has had rave reviews. I found it slightly annoying: florid language, and pretentious layout (with no quotation marks for speech and odd indentation). Needless to say, as seems to be required for "serious" literature these days, it's written in the present tense. I wasn't moved by any of the characters. The story jumps about, but too much was missing between the present and the past. The first, longer, part describes Dol's childhood in Cardiff in the 60s. The second part describes a family reunion 30 years later. I am clearly a voice in the wilderness here, though.