Remember Me: A Novel - Softcover

Azzopardi, Trezza

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802141765 ISBN 13: 9780802141767

Publisher: Grove Press, 2005

Synopsis

The much-anticipated second novel by the Man Booker Prize finalist and national best-selling author of The Hiding Place is a harrowing, elegant, and vivid portrait of a lost life at last reclaimed. Winnie would say she's no trouble, content to let the days go by, bothering no one. Living on the edge of nowhere, she'd rather not recall the past and, at seventy-two, doesn't see much point in thinking too much about the future. But when her closed existence is shattered by a random act of violence, Winnie is catapulted out of her exile. Robbed of everything she owns, she embarks on a journey to track down her stolen belongings-but soon finds her search has become the rediscovery of a stolen life. As Winnie pieces together the fragments of her life, her once-secluded world begins to fill with people: her devoted father; the haunting figure of her mother; her domineering grandfather; and Joseph, her only love. At last Winnie understands that she has not escaped from her life at all; she has simply been circling it. Now she must come to terms with the final revelation, one so profoundly shocking that she had concealed it even from herself.

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: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802141765
• ISBN 13: 9780802141767
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272