Sailboats on the Water Art Print by Marie Antonia Torres
Posted by: Lisa Loma | March 22, 2022
The Hiding Identify, by Trezza Azzopardi
Well, I certainly did not program to read some other dark book with confronting themes, but I wanted to read something for Reading Wales 2022 hosted by Paula at BookerJotter via Booker Talk, and Trezza Azzopardi'due south The Hiding Place was the only Welsh book I had on the TBR. However, one time I started reading the book I could not put it downward, so once once more I am start my review with a trigger warning:
If anything in this review raises problems for yous,
help is available at White Ribbon Australia or your local support service.
Trezza Azzopardi (b.1961) emerged into the literary landscape with a rare accomplishment: The Hiding Identify was her debut novel and information technology was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize. Debut novels are quite unremarkably shortlisted for major prizes here in Australia, just it doesn't frequently happen with the Booker. The Hiding Place likewise joined some very distinguished company when information technology won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2001 and was shortlisted for the James Tait Blackness Memorial Prize. Since then Azzopardi has published four more than novels: Remember Me, (2003); Winterton Bluish, (2007) and The Song House, (2010) and The Tip of My Tongue (2013).
Karen at Booker Talk lists The Hiding Place among Welsh authors: 80 Books to inspire y'all and from in that location she links to this review which included Azzopardi'south novel in Wales Arts Review'southward 'Greatest Welsh Novel' series. I did not know whatever of this when I bought the volume back in 2005 from the Readings Bargain Tabular array. I noticed the Booker shortlisting on its comprehend, and brought information technology home.
The Hiding Place defies any romanticised How Greenish was My Valley expectations you might have of Welsh writing. Azzopardi was built-in in Cardiff to a Maltese begetter and a Welsh mother, and her novel is set in the underbelly of Cardiff — its docklands, where sailors came from all over the world and made utilize of the gambling dens, the clubs and the good-time girls. Sometimes these men fell for a local lass and stayed. Salvatore marries Carlotta and stays articulate of the vice but makes the mistake of befriending and trusting Frankie…
Azzopardi doesn't romanticise the Maltese community of the postwar era in this story of a dysfunctional family. Frankie Gauci, aided and abetted by a bunch of gangsters and gamblers, is a monster who destroys his family: his married woman Mary, and his six girls, Celesta, Marina, Rose, Fran, Luca and Dolores, the youngest. Told through the optics of Dolores, the story traverses the forties through to the sixties, offset with her birth on the day when her male parent has gambled abroad his entire income — his half-share in Salvatore's café, forth with their home above it, and all the coin they have. His greatest regret, nevertheless, seems to be that he'due south as well lost his father'due south ruby ring…
Dolores is brought home to sleep shut into a breast.
My female parent told me how she wrapped me in a shawl at night and hid me from my male parent.
He would have smothered you, she said, without malice but with a strange sense of pride, every bit if I were a Rescue kitten she had taken in. (p.5)
Culminating in a distorted family reunion later on the mother'south expiry, the narration looks dorsum on a babyhood marred by poverty, violence, and fearfulness. At the age of four and maimed in a careless burn down, Dolores' has an imperfect agreement of what she sees and hears but the reader tin can empathise how things are:
My female parent'due south laugh below and the chink of a bottle reminds me I am on picket. He'southward loping down the street, almost home, and I run to whisper in my mother's ear. Eva drags her coat off the chair, pockets the canteen of rum, and moves to the back door. She lifts the latch and lets herself out. The air is frosty. My mother breaks off some blackened parsley from a pot next to the step, and folds it into her oral fissure.
Go upstairs now, Dol, and do your puzzle, she says. I must keep out of my father's way. (p.half dozen)
Mary manages to protect Dol from existence smothered, only overwhelmed past one disaster later on another, she tin can't protect her other children.
Today, Docklands in Melbourne, London and enough of other places around the world are sites for posh retail and hospitality venues, marinas for expensive boats, and luxurious glass and steel apartment towers. It was a unlike world when Azzopardi wrote this shocking novel, but I dubiety that human being nature has changed. It'due south but moved to somewhere else…
Author: Trezza Azzopardi
Title: The Hiding Place
Publisher: Picador, 2000
ISBN: 9780330480413, pbk.,282 pages
Source: Personal library, purchased from Readings in 2005, $10.00
Posted in 20th century, Azzopardi Trezza, British authors, Family violence, Female authors, FICTION, Read in 2022, REVIEWS, Social novels, Wales (settings), Welsh authors | Tags: Book Reviews, The Hiding Identify, Trezza Azzopardi
Source: https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/03/22/the-hiding-place-by-trezza-azzopardi/
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