Publisher's Weekly Review
In this odd and moving second novel from Azzopardi, whose first novel, The Hiding, was a Booker finalist, a thief makes off with a small case containing some useless relics belonging to an elderly homeless woman-variously called Patricia, Lillian and Winifred, depending on the people who "care" for her. Patricia's search for the thief and her belongings becomes an excavation of her past, beginning with her prewar girlhood in the English town of Chapelfield; it's a haunting evocation of neglect, abuse and mental illness. Born with a head of spiky red locks that her dad refers to as "telltale" hair, the "feeble-minded" Patricia is passed off to her grandfather (after her depressed, delusional mother dies), then, during WWII, sent to live with a bitter, lonely aunt on a scraggly farm. But when 15-year-old Patricia gets pregnant, she's shuttled back to Chapelfield, only to discover that all her relatives have disappeared. It's a harrowing, painful story, saved from melodrama by the unsentimental first-person perspective and a challenging, elliptical narrative. The backstory, revolving around the telltale hair, is slow to emerge, but as the pieces of the plot begin to fall into place, the book gains sweep and power, building to an unexpected (and unexpectedly horrifying) climax. The prose has flashes of brilliance-"the rain is a river of silver coins"-and while some readers won't respond to the fatalistic acquiescence of Patricia/Lillian/Winnie, they can't fail to be moved by the sadness that shrouds this largely lost life. Agent, Derek Johns, A.P. Watt. (Mar. 11) Forecast: The Hiding Place sold 60,000 copies in the U.S. and was a Book Sense 76 title. Despite the downbeat nature of Azzopardi's second novel, the publisher is sending the author on a 15-city tour, backed by a national advertising campaign, which should help ensure similar sales numbers. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
From her miserable childhood in the 1930s through her increasingly troubled adulthood, a vagrant woman is doomed from birth, her few happy moments elusive if not delusional. Seventy-two-year-old Winnie is sleeping in an abandoned shoe shop when she's robbed of the "case" that holds the hodgepodge of mementos that add up to her life. Setting out to find the thief, a red-haired young woman who may be a figment of her imagination--Winnie's hair was red as a girl--the old woman reaches for fragments of faltering memory. As a six-year-old named Patsy sitting in a corner at kindergarten because she's unable to keep up, she is already marked as damaged goods. At home, her gentle but ineffectual father cares for her while her mother lies in bed beset by "ghosts." After her mother's half-understood suicide, Patsy is sent to her maternal grandfather, who renames her Lillian. When WWII breaks out, she is evacuated to her aunt Ena in the country, accompanied by her grandfather's kindly boarder, with whom Aunt Ena has an affair until he too disappears (run off by the locals). When Patsy/Lillian is impregnated by Joe, another evacuated young Londoner with whom she hopes to run away to the end of the world, Aunt Ena packs her back to London. Unable to locate her grandfather (who has died), Patsy/Lillian becomes Winnie when she's taken up by a clairvoyant who recognizes that she has the Gift--she now sees the ghosts her mother described. After the clairvoyant, Winnie is taken in by Mr. Hewitt, a shoe-shop owner, until he realizes that she's the daughter of his brother, who ran away with Mr. Hewitt's fiancÉ. Winnie ends up in a mental institution for 24 years, and when she's released, life goes all the more downhill. Second-novelist Azzopardi (the Booker-shortlisted Hiding Place, 2000) makes Winnie's bleak life compelling by completing the jigsaw of her addled world piece by piece until it makes sense. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Azzopardi's canny sense of the link between trauma and mental instability shaped her first novel, The Hiding Place (2000). In her second, she hones both her craft and her insights to create a darkly mystical tale of loss, betrayal, and disconnection. Her narrator, Winnie, a homeless woman in her seventies, is a compelling yet enigmatic narrator whose memories of her painful past are abruptly reawakened when she is robbed of her precious few possessions. The reader is carried back to her lonely childhood, when she was known as Patsy, then Lillian, and farmed out to unloving relatives in the English countryside after her mother commits suicide and the Nazis begin their bombing blitz. Considered simpleminded, she suffers every sort of deprivation and is at everyone's mercy, including a lustful shoemaker and a Svengali-like couple who transform her into a crowd-thrilling clairvoyant. Azzopardi's prose is spellbinding. Her rendering of a soul unmoored is keenly poignant. The mysterious and involving situations she conjures are fairy-tale-like in their haunting harshness and deep resonance, and her subtle questioning of our notions of identity, family, and the claims of the dead make for a profoundly contemplative read. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Azzopardi's grim second novel is a poetically wrought, if enigmatic, look at mental illness and homelessness. When the book opens, Winifred Foy, a.k.a. Lillian Price and Patsy or Patricia Richards, is 72 years old and sleeping in an abandoned house. When her minimal possessions are stolen, she begins a compulsive search to recover what was lost: a brooch, a locket, several scarves and mismatched gloves, and a bag filled with hair. As the hunt gets underway, the novel slowly uncovers each item's meaning, a tragic rendering rife with pathology. Set against the backdrop of World War II and its aftermath, the narrative shows how one person can straddle the line between victim and victimizer. Like Azzopardi's debut, The Hiding Place, a Booker Prize nominee, her latest novel is both unsettling and poignant. And despite depressing, almost creepy overtones, it is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/03.]-Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
