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Synopsis
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About the Author
TREZZA AZZOPARDI is the critically acclaimed author of The Hiding Place, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and longlisted for the Orange Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and Remember Me, which was shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year. Born in Cardiff, Wales, she is a graduate of the Creative Writing School at the University of East Anglia. She lives in Norfolk, England.
From Publishers Weekly
Frank McCourt and Mary Karr may have written definitive accounts of grim childhoods, but British first novelist Azzopardi can stand on her own as a writer of remarkable sensibility and literary prowess. A seedy dockside community in 1960s Wales is the apt setting for this memoir-like narrative. Physical and emotional abuse haunts every detail in Azzopardi's account of a poor Maltese immigrant family's misery. Dolores, the youngest of the six Gauci daughters, narrates the story of her father Frankie's arrival in Tiger Bay, Wales, his marriage to young waitress Mary Jessop, the birth of their children and the family's eventual disintegration as a result of Frankie's gambling and jealousy. In Part One, Dolores's five-year-old narration is emotionless as she relates the awful events that shape their lives. Hers is the perfect voice to unearth the family's confusing and shady secrets; because the child doesn't quite understand the emotional impact of situations, she questions and observes with detachment. On the day Dolores is born, Frankie gambles away their house and caf . When she is just a month old, Dolores loses her left hand in a fire. Frankie's jealousy and gambling debts lead him to sell one of his daughters, Marina, to gangster Joe Medora, the man he believes is her father. Azzopardi chills the blood with gruesome details as Frankie skins Dolores's pet rabbit for older sister Celesta's wedding dinner. Eventually, Frankie abandons the family to join Medora, and Mary, losing her grip on reality, also loses the remaining children to public care. Dolores's stoic perspective continues into adulthood, as, in Part Two, the sisters return to Tiger Bay for Mary's funeral. Although the narrative line can confuse as the story shifts from present to past, readers will be riveted by this brilliant psychological prose poem of a family united only in helplessness and despair, in a poverty-stricken corner of the world rarely evoked in fiction. (Jan.)
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- PublisherPicador (an Imprint of MacMillan Publishers Ltd.)
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0330486500
- ISBN 13 9780330486507
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Edition number1
- Number of pages278
- Rating
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The Hiding Place
Seller: WeBuyBooks, Rossendale, LANCS, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned. A tan to the pages. Seller Inventory # wbs3419483858
Quantity: 1 available
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The Hiding Place
Seller: Manyhills Books, Traralgon, VIC, Australia
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Trade Paperback. Condition: Good (ex-library). Trade Paperback. 282 pages. *** PUBLISHING DETAILS: Pan Books, UK, 2000. *** CONDITION: This book is in good (ex-library) condition. More specifically: Ex-library with usual marks, stamps, stickers. Covers have light creasing. Corners of covers are moderately bumped. Spine is uncreased. . Cover is protected in clear, self-adhesive laminate. Edges of pages are lightly browned. Pages are lightly creased. *** ABOUT THIS BOOK: Dolores, the narrator, tells the story of her childhood - her father, Frankie, a compulsive gambler who, due to a misunderstanding at the moment of her birth loses everything to his rival, Joe Medora, head of the Maltese Mafia. *** Quantity Available: 1. Category: Fiction; Drama & Sagas; ISBN: 0330486500. ISBN/EAN: 9780330486507. Inventory No: 20040349. Seller Inventory # 20040349
Quantity: 1 available
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The Hiding Place
Seller: Dial-A-Book, NARRABEEN, NSW, Australia
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
8vo softcover 278pp very good. The Gaucis' story is seen through the eyes of Dolores, the youngest daughter and the embodiment of bad luck in her father's estimation, condemned to bear the mark of a family that is rapidly singeing at the edges. Dolores presents an unsparing portrayal of the fear and hopelessness of childhood amid grim poverty and neglect, of children growing up without safety nets and on sunken foundations. Sustained by a tightrope tension and a stark, youthful wisdom, The Hiding Place conjures the coarse sensuality of life among the docks, the smoky cafes and bars, the crumbling homes and gambling rooms of Tiger Bay. Seller Inventory # 49386
Quantity: 1 available