Remember Me - Hardcover

Azzopardi, Trezza

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330493450 ISBN 13: 9780330493451

Publisher: London : Picador, 2004

Synopsis

Seventy-two-year-old, red-haired Winnie—homeless and abandoned time and again by those she's trusted—would say she's no trouble. She is content to let the days go by, minding her own business, bothering no one. Winnie would rather not recall the past, and at her age, doesn't see much point in thinking about the future. But she is catapulted out of her exile when a young girl robs her of her suitcase and her wig—her only material possessions.

Winnie then embarks on a journey to find the thief, and what begins as a search for stolen belongings becomes the rediscovery of a stolen life. Forced to take stock of how events long buried have brought her to a derelict house on the edge of nowhere, she relives the secrets of a past she had disowned.

As she pieces together the fragments of her life, Winnie recognizes that she is no longer simply on a hunt for stolen goods. After all these years, she has not escaped from her life at all: she has been circling it, and now must come to terms with it.

Also available as a Grove Press hardcover.

About this title

About the Author

Trezza Azzopardi was born in Cardiff. She is a graduate of the creative writing school at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of Remember Me and The Hiding Place, a national bestseller and Man Booker Prize finalist. Azzopardi lives in Norwich, England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I’ve got to go and live with my grandfather. I don’t know him, and my father won’t be coming with me, but there’s nothing to be done. It’s been decided.

Needs must, Pats, my father says. It’s a mystery to me. He doesn’t explain the words, and I’m not allowed to question. I’m going to live with an old man that I don’t know and my father can’t abide. He used to call him That Old Devil, but now that needs must, my father doesn’t call him anything at all. I’ve never met the devil, but I’ve seen his face.

Under the stairs in the pantry there was a carton which I wasn’t allowed to touch, sitting alongside other things that weren’t touchable, like the Vim and my father’s shoe polish. The carton had got lye inside, which is poison. There was a picture of the devil on the outside, to prove it. He had a red face, red hair, pointed teeth, and a tail going up in a loop, sharp as a serving fork. He didn’t look at all like my grandfather. My mother kept a photograph of him in a silver frame on the table next to her bottles of Wincarnis. I wasn’t allowed to touch that either. The picture was in black and white. When my mother did her hair, or sometimes when she slept, I would sit on the stool by her bed and stare at him, and think about the devil inside. I reasoned that his face could be red in real life, and he wasn’t smiling, so he could easily have pointed teeth. In the photograph, he looked uncomfortable. That would be the tail, doing that: he’d be sitting on it.

Edition details

• Publisher: London : Picador
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0330493450
• ISBN 13: 9780330493451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261