The Hiding Place: A Novel
by Trezza Azzopardi
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Book Summary Information
Author: Trezza AzzopardiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-01-09
ISBN: 0802138594
Number of pages: 282
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of The Hiding Place: A Novel
Book Review: (4.5) "Third degree damage"
Summary: 4 Stars
"My father's love is chance." Frank Gauci is a gambler of Sicilian-Maltese descent who has lost his half of a business and the decent home his family occupied. Now the family of two adults and six daughters live in a few crowded rooms in Cardiff, Wales, while Frank thoughtlessly loses the few possessions left and his wife, Mary, cope with what is left of her dreams. It is hard to imagine a more destitute world than that of the Gauci family.
This is the story of poverty, of the loss of family and the respect of strangers, when the weight of an indifferent world presses against hope until it is extinguished, leaving only despair in its wake. Yet, even in this hollow den of few comforts, a mother's love for her children is indestructible. Delores is born in 1960, another disappointment to Frank, who wishes for boys, only to be denied. When the new baby is burned in a kitchen fire, her left hand permanently disfigured, the family is driven deeper into a black despair. Delores senses the rampant emotions in her house, particularly the anger: "I am breast fed: I get rage straight from the source".
The few small rooms of their home are filled with growing bodies, with no hiding place. Tragedy strikes randomly, leaving all without privacy, sorting emotions that fly through the rooms with nowhere to land as the clamor of need presses the air from the dismal rooms. Four girls who sleep in one room with their mother know everything about each other, form alliances against the weaker ones, especially "the crip", and yearn for space. But even this desperate place is a home, where children form attachments and memories. A raging, cruel father is still a father, a mother meant to be a source of comfort, even as her mind is unraveling.
Eventually, the mother breaks down and the girls are given into foster care, the young girls who crowded the small rooms scattered to the winds, disentangling from sisterhood. Their poor, rattled mother cannot save her daughters from the daily violence that weaves the fabric of their lives. Delores is marked for failure, the badly deformed left hand ruined by the fire; Fran's scars are self-inflicted, a continuation of the beatings that marked her childhood, a self-tattoo etched on the inside of her arm; Celesta rises above the past, her husband's wealth a key to forgetfulness; Luca and Rose are embittered allies with shared disappointments and Marina has long disappeared.
"Children burnt and children bartered. Someone must be to blame." Finally, the girls gather at the death of their mother, Dol in the lead, as they dredge up the pain of years of betrayal, exposing the withered heart of a selfish father and the desperate soul of a mother who could not protect her children. The past must be purged of secrets, harrowing images, lost childhoods, broken promises and heartless reality.
This book is ferocious, unsparing in its honesty and relentless in search of the truth. The prose is adamant, impossible to ignore. That such a story can be told is a testament to the wisdom and courage of the author, her brilliant prose seductive, yet terrifying, awakening the monsters that root so easily in the soil of abject poverty. But the spirit of survival is not easily extinguished, the innocent, battered souls released to the light. Luan Gaines/2005.
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