Define Regarding Books The Hiding Place
| Title | : | The Hiding Place |
| Author | : | Trezza Azzopardi |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 288 pages |
| Published | : | December 7th 2001 by Grove Press (first published 2000) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Literary Fiction |
Description In Favor Of Books The Hiding Place
A finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, The Hiding Place -- Welsh novelist Trezza Azzopardi's lyrical tale of an immigrant family in Cardiff -- has been compared to Frank McCourt's bleak, stirring memoir Angela's Ashes. But The Hiding Place need not "hide" behind any ready-made comparisons; Azzopardi's astonishing, tension-filled debut stands assuredly on its own as a work of tremendous power and originality.
The Hiding Place is narrated by Dolores, the youngest of six daughters born to a Maltese immigrant father and a Welsh mother. With one hand permanently disfigured by a fire when she was only one month old -- the hand is beautifully described by the author as "a closed white tulip standing in the rain; a cutoff creamy marble in the shape of a Saint; a church candle with its tears flowing down the bulb of wrist" -- Dolores has always been treated as an outcast. Her father, Frankie Gauci, is an incorrigible gambler who bets "more than he can afford to lose." On the day Dolores is born, he loses his half-share of a café, as well as the apartment above it where his family lives. Everything in Frankie's life is potential currency, including his family; he even sells his second-oldest daughter Marina to gangster Joe Medora in exchange for a house and money to pay off his debts. Dolores's mother, Mary, is driven to the edge of insanity as she watches the world around her collapse, helpless to save even her children from her husband's vices.
At times, The Hiding Place paints a phantasmagoric portrait of cruelty, but Trezza Azzopardi's gracefully exacting prose saves her tale from becoming a shock-fest of the sort you would expect on daytime television talk shows. Azzopardi forges profundity through delicately interwoven double-sided images: rabbits that are the children's playthings, until they are brutally slaughtered by their father; trunks, rooms, and cages that can either protect or ensnare; and most abundantly and most significantly, fire, which can warm as well as ravage. Even Dolores's older sister Fran is sent away to a home for being a pyromaniac, craving risk like her father, "gambling on how hot, how high, on how long she can bear it."
While some readers may wonder how Dolores is able to relate events that happened when she was so young, it is easy to associate these stories with the phantom pains she feels in her missing fingers, her ability to "miss something [she] never knew." The story comes to us in a dreamlike tapestry, weaving together different times and perspectives. Consequently, the narrative is fragmented, leaving the reader with half-tellings, missing details, stories that unfold only in the retelling, and a sense that the only fact we can be certain of is the profound meaning she imparts through them. The Hiding Place is as much a portrait of a family's destruction as it is an exploration of how memory bends and buckles under the weight of ruin, and how "blame can be twisted like a flame in draught; it will burn and burn."
Point Books During The Hiding Place
| Original Title: | The Hiding Place |
| ISBN: | 0802138594 (ISBN13: 9780802138590) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Cardiff, Wales(United Kingdom) |
| Literary Awards: | Booker Prize Nominee (2000), Orange Prize Nominee for Longlist (2001), Guardian First Book Award Nominee for Longlist (2000), James Tait Black Memorial Prize Nominee for Fiction (2000), Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (2001) |
Rating Regarding Books The Hiding Place
Ratings: 3.54 From 1438 Users | 147 ReviewsCriticism Regarding Books The Hiding Place
Trezza Azzopardi was nominated for the prestigious international Booker award for her first novel: The Hiding Place. Set in a 1960s immigrant enclave in Cardiff, Wales, The Hiding Place is told from the point of view of the youngest daughter in a Maltese family, Dol, short for Dolores. The family is brutalized by their boorish, selfish father,Frankie, a man who never wanted Dol, nor really any of his six daughters who, in Frankie's mind, surely should have been sons if they were to be of any3.5 stars. rounded up
I studied this as part of course at uni: we were covering "contemporary literature" which involved having the writers (who just so happen to teach at UEA) coming and talking to us about a novel of their own, and a novel by another author that inspired them, although Trezza Azzopardi chose not to do this. Anyway, although I found Azzopardi herself very interesting, and engaged with many of her ideas and themes (such as memory, reconstructing the past etc), I really struggled to stay involved with
This drama did a remarkable job of describing the breakdown of a family. Everything rang true--the characters, their interactions with one another, and especially the casual cruelty and deep protectiveness among siblings.
The Hiding Place is divided into two parts; part one takes place when Dol is a child between ages 0 and about 4, while part two takes place when Dol is an adult coming back to her hometown to reunite with her sisters for the first time is several years for her mother's funeral. It's written in a very confusing style. Several of the sentences are fragments, the spoken words are not in quotations, and sometimes I am unaware of who is speaking each line. However, if you can get past the book
The plot had potential but the writing style made it painfully slow, often boring and in the end confusing. This is the story of a family set in the background of Maltese immigrants in Cardiff. Not actually knowing that background myself, many of the settings reminded me of the Godfather or the Sopranos. The parents Frankie and Mary go through some hard times and aren't very successful taking care of their six girls and so it's often the community that has to do it for them. While I liked some
We are discussing this book on Saturday for reading group, so my thoughts may change after chatting about it and I'll let you know.*I read this in a couple of days and found it really readable and engaging enough that I wanted to keep reading it and finding out what had happened. I was drawn in by the style of the writing too, which in the main I enjoyed. I wasn't a huge fan on the structure of the book - going back and forth in time - and found the second part of the book where the main
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