Rating: 
Summary: Masterful writing...story telling talent all in one!
Review: There is no denying the depth of Trezza Azzopardi's writing talent in this emotionaly powerful book. She tells a story of poverty & abuse endured by a family just hanging by a thread...Looking back from adulthood, Dol (Dolores, the youngest of 6 daughters), narrates the details of devasting years of pain & hearbreak suffered for so long and that she still has to deal with. The horrifying memories of a 5 year old, convey the child's bewilderment faced with such cruelty & at the same time hope of something better.The author's story telling skills just want to make you read on and find out the outcome of this family saga. Will they survive?...or better yet who will survive? When you reach the last pages you realise there could be no better ending and tears might even come to your eyes.
I found this book hard to put down. I enjoyed Ms. Azzopardi's masterful writing & eagerly await her future literary work.
Rating:
Summary: I wish there were a sixth star...
Review: This book simply blew me away. It is easily one of the five most beautifully written works I have read in the last ten years. This is saying something, because I am extremely difficult to please when it comes to fiction. The writing is gorgeous, and the story is seamlessly told. So many of the book's wonderful images have stayed with me for several months. I'm not saying this is a beautiful story--it's horrifying, actually, but somehow the author manages to tell it with a grace and clarity that keeps you glued to the page, taking in every gorgeous line.
Rating: 
Summary: Azzopardi's Ashes
Review: This is a fairly grim debut novel about a family's deprivation in 1960s Cardiff. Frank Gauci has emigrated from Malta in the late 1940s, and gets a very real culture shock when he sees snow for the first time. However, Frank soon gets over his malaise, helped by his friendship with Joe Medora and his marriage to the runaway Mary. With his friend Salvatore, Frank is soon in business running The Moonlight. However, Maltese tradition stresses the importance of having a son. After 5 daughters, when Mary is pregnant for the sixth time, Frank just knows that his luck must be in. And Frank is very experienced as a gambling man... So sets off a chain of events that it will haunt the family and neighbourhood for forty years. I suppose if you were to put this novel into any genre, then it would be 'Angela's Ashes'. Although Azzopardi herself was born and brought up in Cardiff, and seems to be from a Maltese background, this is a work of fiction. The setting is Tiger Bay, 'Britain's Valletta', home to many races and mixed marriages, and Shirley Bassey. Frank seems to have bought his way into the more unsettling regions of Maltese culture. The story of the Gaucis is quite grim - there's a pivotal scene where Dolores, sometime narrator, the hoped for boy who turned out to be a girl, is caught in a fire whilst still a baby. The fire has left her mutilated for life: "that soft skin is petrol, those bones are tinder". The preceding excerpt gives you an indication of what Azzopardi's subtle, lyrical prose is like. Azzopardi's words are understated, true, and original, without ever straining at the leash of credibility. The narrative moves forwards and backwards in time, and jumps from narrator to narrator, yet Azzopardi's technique is so simple and supreme, that you never find yourself lost. One of the scenes that really ring true is the funeral. Azzopardi's observations are spot on, and make you think that you really are standing in Dolores' shoes. Time has separated and divided the sisters, only death, it seems, can bring them together. Dolores can't help but wonder about the missing details of her life. Although she was very young when the family was divided, Dolores seems to have seen everything. But there are some things, it seems, which have been blocked from her memory. Like the true physical nature of the hiding place... There's also the internal hiding place, where Dolores has closely guarded her memories, the funeral as catalyst to spark them once more. There's also a funeral atmosphere about the Cardiff streets in which she grew up. Most of the houses have been discarded, knocked down to make way for the call of rejuvenation. Memories and places destroyed. Only a few ghosts from the past are recognisable. It is Dolores' misfortune that she had a superstitious father. Ugly subplots about disease, children's homes, and debt collectors, boil subtly under the surface. Poverty exists even when you own a TV set in the early sixties. Yet despite all this grimness, you sense that there is still a reason for living, for holding on. The resolution is neither uplifting nor particularly downbeat. Life just is, Azzopardi seems to be saying. Dolores doesn't have a friend like Shug Avery in this novel, but she seems to have found her own way, even though the details of her current life in Nottingham are absent. Dolores cannot think of anything but the past. Life is difficult, suicide even more so. Azzopardi does not dwell on the misery. Dolores cannot but help going back to the bad memories of her childhood, to be nostalgic despite the pain. And people do live with the pain. We all have our own hiding place, as Azzopardi readily acknowledges.
Rating:
Summary: The Hiding Review
Review: Trezza Azzopardi debuted a great novel about a Maltese family living in Cardiff, Wales. The book is filled with childhood pain for the six daughters of an abusive father and a mentally ill mother. The story is told through the youngest daughter Dolores. The first part of the book starts out from Dolores's birth to around the age of 4 or 5. Azzopardi's writing abilities give you the sense of horror that the girls had growing up. The girls reunite at the end and look back on their past as deep family secrets are revealed. The novel tells a great story of sisterhood and the bond between a family.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive debut and worthy Booker nominee
Review: Trezza Azzopardi's debut novel and Booker Prize nominee,"The Hiding Place", may be treading familar grounds visited by more famous writers like Frank McCourt and others but what it offers is a stylish and refreshing account of how Frankie, patriach of the Maltese immigrant Gauci family who has settled down in Cardiff, Wales, would gamble, trade and surrender the future of his family and friends to the nebulous underworld. Based on the childhood memories of youngest daughter, Dolores, the story is told in a jerky sequence that flits in short spurts (albeit seamlessly) between past and present, using images and details of recollection that resemble shards of broken glass from a fragmented past. Azzopardi paces the novel expertly, the gathering momentum keeping the reader engrossed as he tries to re-order the ever shifting mosaic of an imperfectly remembered past. So, it takes nearly all of 282 pages for a not quite complete picture of how it really was for Mary and the girls to be unveiled....but to register relief at being handed the truth is surely to miss the point. Celeste, Rose, Fran and Luca, given the chance, would have their own stories to tell. Celeste, the eldest, who willed herself into accepting an arranged marriage to an old widower, would be surprised to find herself portrayed as a self centred, conceited snob when the sisters meet after years of separation at their mother's funeral. It is surely also a testimony of the strength and success of Azzopardi's characterisation that we should have a confident dual appreciation of the characters. The loyal Salvador, big hearted Eva, and fire loving oddball sister Fran, are gorgeous creations of humanity. While there are no happy endings for the damaged lives that must carry on, the author pulls a lovely surprise at the every end when the one character you wonder and care about finally arrives to complete the reunion. I finished the book with a big smile on my face. What a rare treat !
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