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, subtle, 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 which really rings 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.
authortrek rating: 8/10.
Kevin Patrick Mahoney
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