This exceptional novel about family, love, and the innocence and terror
of childhood was one of the most applauded and auspicious debuts of the
last year. Compared by reviewers to Angela's Ashes and Wuthering
Heights, The Hiding Place was the only debut work to be shortlisted for
England's prestigious Booker Prize -- in the company of Kazuo Ishiguro
and Margaret Atwood -- and went on to become a universally praised U.S.
national best-seller. Set in a Maltese immigrant community in Cardiff,
Wales, and peopled with sharp-edged, luminously drawn characters, The
Hiding Place is the story of Frankie Gauci, his wife, Mary, and their
six daughters. With her unusual gift for letting her characters'
interior lives come forth (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Azzopardi
chronicles Frankie's unforgivable betrayal: gambling away his family's
livelihood and eventually the family itself. 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. Astonishing and iridescent (The Times,
London), The Hiding Place is a mesmerizing exploration of how family,
like fire, can shift suddenly from something that provides light and
warmth to a dangerous conflagration, sparing no one in its path. A
harrowing and remarkably self-assured first novel [that] possesses all
the immediacy and emotional power of a memoir.... -- Michiko Kakutani,
The New York Times
