The Hiding Place

by Trezza Azzopardi,

published by Picador, £14.99

designed by Richard Evans

QN: This one looks like it has been done by the same designer as the Keepers of Truth. It’s got the same typeface.

JO: It looks like Courier, or Clarendon Light. The whole book has been thought about. The publisher, Picador, has a history of doing this. It is printed on very nice paper. It is definitely a picture library shot: three hippy girls in a derelict kitchen.

QN: If we go back to the Kazuo Ishiguro book for a moment, he has a distinct readership, an audience that enjoys post-colonial, dissolute, sad novels. Keepers of the Truth, the one with the fridge dragged into the street, is pretty obviously of the ‘dirty realist’ school of writing, similar in style to authors such as Richard Ford or Jayne-Anne Philips. And this one, this looks like a chick book.

JO: I always think a cover should be like a film poster, because they work so damn well. If the book is made into a film, what would you do then. Film posters always have a little something behind the actors’ faces that tells you exactly what the film is about. In the Perfect Storm, for example, you have a giant wave and a boat, which is what the story consists of. As for the one with the fridge, I would not know what the hell that was about.

QN: I think that is part of the dirty realist thing. It says; ‘My life is dull and suburban, and I am going to write about people whose lives are basically quite uneventful’. The fridge dragged into the street therefore becomes a metaphor for a dull and domestic life, which is then dragged out for examination. With this book, The Hiding Place there is a faint sexual undertone, suggesting that these girls have been left alone for hours in this abandoned place.

JO: Do you think a guy is going to buy this book?

QN: Never. Well, maybe the faint sexual undertone might get a few guys to buy it, but you’ve got to read the whole thing. You’ve got to like working hard for your kicks.

The Hiding Place

The novel centres on Dolores, a member of the Maltese community in Cardiff in the 1960s. Her story, and the various fates of her elder sisters, is searingly painful and vividly communicated.

Book synopsis edited from The Guardian