This interview was conducted by Kevin Patrick Mahoney in
the December of 2000.
KPM: You were born in
Cardiff, and your surname appears to be of Maltese origins, so it would
appear that the setting of 'The Hiding Place' has great resonance for you
personally. What was the catalyst for the writing of 'The Hiding
Place'? Were you seeking to recapture a place that is now disappearing due
to renovation?
Trezza Azzopardi:
I drew on my own background for
the ‘skeleton’ of the novel: I was born and grew up in Cardiff, my father was
Maltese and my mother is Welsh. My parents lived down the docks, and moved to
Splott just before I was born, so much of the geography of the novel is drawn
from places I was familiar with as a child. The docklands of the 1960s and 70s
bears very little relationship to the “Cardiff Bay” of now, at least in terms
of the landscape. I wanted to capture some of the desolate beauty of the old
docks, the liveliness of the community, and the ‘darkness’ of life I intuited
as a child. The catalyst could be said to be an unbidden voice - that of
Dolores, the narrator - who on a simple level represents an ‘everychild’s’
longing to recover lost memories and fragments from the past, and finds that
the journey back is much more complex.
KPM:
As well as Maltese culture, there's a fair bit of Welsh culture
in 'The Hiding Place', like Elizabeth Preece calling Dolores
'Cariad'. What with the new Welsh assembly, what do you think an
upsurge in Welsh nationalism will do for Welsh literature?
Trezza Azzopardi:
I wouldn’t presume to speak on
behalf of Welsh writers or Welsh literature; I hope that my writing is not
fixed by physical geography, but might be seen as universal. Also, I haven’t
lived in Wales for twenty years, so I would be reluctant to make any
pronouncements on Welsh literature - it’s simply not for me to do that. It’s a
debate that interests me a great deal though; I have often been described as a
‘Welsh’ writer, which presumes that English writers are the unspoken norm! A
look at any bookshelf will tell a different story.
KPM: How long has the story for 'The Hiding Place' been gestating
in your mind? With all the recent horror stories about Welsh
children's homes in the news, do you think that now is just the right
time for this novel to get maximum impact?
Trezza Azzopardi:
I want to emphasise that to my
mind it is not a story about child abuse; it is a recounting of a family
history through the memories of a child; it is the story of survival, and to
me, says as much about the vagaries of luck and fate as it does about being a
child in what some would describe as a deprived home.
As for the news reports; whether it’s Welsh children’s homes - or
Catholic priests - or youth Remand centres - or Orkney - there are always
stories in the press about the horrors inflicted on children and young people;
I feel it would be immoral to make any link with someone else’s suffering in
order to gain some sort of dubious ‘impact’ - and indeed I’ve never knowingly
done so. You might also say (some have!) that this is a novel about feckless
gambling men, about perceptions of disability, or adversity, or families . . .
This book has been boiling for years; it’s not issue-led.
(But I heard on the news just this morning that Tony Blair and David Blunkett
are condoning the hitting of children as a form of ‘discipline’. We live in a
culture where the least powerful section of our society suffers the worst abuse
from the most powerful. Now I am interested in that. . . )
KPM: From your brief biography on the dust jacket which mentioned
that you live in Norwich, and fromthe very individual style and tone of your
prose, I could not help but think of the UEA's creative writing MA.
The UEA's website mentioned that you were one of the students. How
influential was the course on your own writing? Did you work on
'The Hiding Place' as part of the MA?
Trezza Azzopardi:
I was on the course at UEA in
1997, and a couple of the chapters from The Hiding Place were up for
discussion. When I began there, I was writing short stories, and gradually,
over the year, the novel developed. It was a very interesting experience for
me, not so much for turning a person into a ‘writer’ (that’s not how it
happens, and it’s not what the course is for) but for allowing me the time
to write in an environment where others were also writing. I wouldn’t say it
influenced my writing style - two fellow students, David Hill and Stephen
Foster, were the most helpful for that, and if the course gave me anything, it
was the great fortune to meet them.
KPM: Malcolm Bradbury, who founded the creative writing MA, has
just passed away. How great a contribution do you think that he has
made to English literature in the last thirty years?
Trezza Azzopardi:
Malcolm Bradbury has not only
contributed to English Literature with his novels and criticism, but in his
teaching. He set up the course at UEA, and not only has it encouraged a raft of
great writers - Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Tracy Chevalier, Susannah Dunn,
Andrew Miller, to name only a few, but Creative Writing is now taught in
universities all over the country. And I think that’s a great thing.
KPM: What was it like to have 'The Hiding Place' called up for
the Booker Prize?
Trezza Azzopardi: It’s still a strange feeling, even to think
about it - as if the whole month was an out-of-body experience. Mary Mount (my
editor at Picador) rang me the morning they announced the shortlist and
screamed down the phone. And then I did some yelling . . . and then I had to
check it was for real by finding the Booker website, so it was virtually
real. I remember seeing my name on the website and thinking, Right, well if
this is a mistake, at least it’s not my mistake. Then the phone didn’t
stop ringing, which reassured me.
KPM: I've always felt sick to the stomach anxiously
awaiting the results of short story competitions that I've entered
locally. What did you feel like on the night of the Booker prize?
Trezza Azzopardi: I felt strangely still. I’d spent the whole
month up to that night having classic anxiety nightmares about arriving at the
Guildhall and finding I had no clothes on, or being turned away at the door,
but on the day itself, all that vanished. I had no illusions about winning -
for me, Margaret Atwood had written the best book and deserved the prize.
KPM: I don't know if you got to see Channel Four's
coverage of the ceremony, but I wasn't all that impressed by the literary
pundits who were brought in, who now seem to be the 'usual suspects':
Bonnie Greer, Ian Rankin, Alain de Botton et al. They're also regularly
employed by BBC2's 'Review', which seems to have cut down greatly its
coverage of the literary novel, and plumped for the visual arts
instead. Radio 4 does cover literature greatly, but I can't help feeling
that a lack of a focused, persistent, and stimulating programme on TV about
contemporary literature can only be detrimental. What did you think
of the broadcast of the ceremony and literature on TV in
general?
Trezza Azzopardi: I have absolutely nothing to
say about the bodies in the crypt. They were hired to talk about other people’s
work, which must be galling.
KPM: 'The Hiding Place' is your debut novel. Did you have
other prose published before this novel in, say, short story magazines?
Trezza Azzopardi:
The first thing I ever had
published was a story in Neon Lit 1 - The Time Out Book of New Writing.
Extracts from The Hiding Place have been published in Take Twenty, the UEA
anthology, and in New Writing 9, the British Council/Vintage anthology.
I had a go at a few short story competitions when I was first a student at UEA
and desperate for money. I was very unsuccessful - I think I won a total of
thirty quid for a story about a cat. It taught me not to even think about
writing to order; it’s a skill I haven’t got.
KPM: Quite a few of your colleagues on the UEA Creative Writing MA
have of course achieved their own literary success. But are there
any particular unknowns' on the course who are about to flourish?
Trezza Azzopardi:
There’s a couple- one who isn’t
unknown, but who should be better known and whose work I’d heartily recommend
is Stephen Foster. His collection of short stories - It Cracks Like Breaking Skin -
was published by Faber and Faber last year, and his first novel, Strides, will
be published by Faber in Spring 2001. David Hill, who was also on the course,
has yet to publish, but his stories will be worth the wait.
KPM: What's next for Trezza Azzopardi?
Trezza Azzopardi:
I’ve started Novel #2, but it’s
difficult to find the vast amounts of time I clearly need in order to do all
the writing-avoidance things I have to do before actually doing any writing. In
January, I’ll be touring in America and Canada, but after that, I should be
able to get down to some serious wandering about the flat eating cold toast and
watching Richard and Judy - my ideal creative environment.
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