Remember Me

by Trezza Azzopardi Narrated by Corrie James

Overview

Seventy-two-year-old, red-haired Winnie-homeless and abandoned time and again by those she's trusted-would say she's no trouble. She is content to let the days go by, minding her own business, bothering no one. Winnie would rather not recall the past, and at her age, doesn't see much point in thinking about the future. But she is catapulted out of her exile when a young girl robs her of her suitcase and her wig-her only material possessions.

Winnie then embarks on a journey to find the thief, and what begins as a search for stolen belongings becomes the rediscovery of a stolen life. Forced to take stock of how events long buried have brought her to a derelict house on the edge of nowhere, she relives the secrets of a past she had disowned.

As she pieces together the fragments of her life, Winnie recognizes that she is no longer simply on a hunt for stolen goods. After all these years, she has not escaped from her life at all: she has been circling it, and now must come to terms with it.

Also available as a Grove Press hardcover.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

Trezza Azzopardi follows up her critically acclaimed debut, The Hiding Place (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001), with this astonishingly powerful novel that opens with a wallop: As an older woman lies sleeping in a dilapidated abandoned home, all her worldly possessions (namely a suitcase and a wig) are ruthlessly stolen. The identity of the thief and the motive for this strange crime come to light, as the old woman attempts to track down her assailant and, in the process, recounts the story of her own fractured life. Christened Lillian but called Patsy, the homeless woman has been known by many names. After the suicide of her mother (an unstable woman who saw ghosts), she was sent to live with her strict grandfather. Her telltale red hair -- the only sure proof of her identity -- is continually disguised: first dyed platinum, then cropped, and finally hidden beneath a dead woman's dark wig. Unceremoniously shunted from relative to relative during the bombings of WWII, Winnie lives a precarious life -- repeatedly exploited, betrayed, and abandoned until, in old age, she is cast out as a derelict to society. As narrator, she recounts the story of her former lives in vivid, disjointed pieces that do not fit together until the book's surprising ending. Elegantly written and compelling, Azzopardi's character-driven novel is a testament to imaginative storytelling. Her Winnie is a narrator sure to be remembered for years to come.

The Washington Post

All of this sounds gothic, but some lives are gothic. And it sounds grim, but Azzopardi, who was a Booker finalist for her first novel, The Hiding Place, writes with such poetry and urgency that it is not. She gives a voice to one whom the world has dismissed as unworthy. When Winifred says Remember Me, she is speaking not only to the reader but to herself. — Elizabeth Gold

The New York Times

Remember Me is a novel of abandonments and absences. The title is not a shriek of despair or a command: it is a quiet plea. If no one remembers us, if we do not remember ourselves, then who are we once all is gone? This is deep and thorny philosophical territory, but Azzopardi enters it with a light, careful tread … Throughout Remember Me Azzopardi maintains a curious and delicate balance between the harshness of Lillian's half-perceived life and the faint shimmers of hope that wash through it. This is a novel to be remembered. — Catherine Lockerbie

Publishers Weekly

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. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

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 Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

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 fiance. Winnie ends up in a mental institution for 24 years, and when she's released, life goes all the moredownhill. 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. First printing of 50,000; author tour. Agent: Derek Johnes/A.P. Watt

JUN/JUL 04 - AudioFile

Corrie James reads this tale of remembrance and abandonment with an odd mix of cynicism and wonder, an appropriate blend to set the tone as main character Winnie looks back on her difficult life. As homeless Winnie attempts to track down the fate of her few stolen belongings, she recounts how each item came into her possession. James alters her voice subtly, giving the young Winnie an optimistic wistfulness, while making the older Winnie sound as wizened and bitter as she has become. The inflections are so subtle, however, and the flashbacks so frequent, that it’s easy confuse timing in the book. The novel itself gets off to a slow start, also matched by James’s reading, but as the story line picks up, so does James’s performance, making the surprise ending worth waiting for. H.L.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172320514
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	05/16/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

remember me

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By Trezza Azzopardi

GROVE PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Trezza Azzopardi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8021-1767-8

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Chapter One

I've got to go and live with my grandfather. I don't know him, and my father won't be coming with me, but there's nothing to be done. It's been decided.

Needs must, Pats, my father says. It's a mystery to me. He doesn't explain the words, and I'm not allowed to question. I'm going to live with an old man that I don't know and my father can't abide. He used to call him That Old Devil, but now that needs must, my father doesn't call him anything at all. I've never met the devil, but I've seen his face.

Under the stairs in the pantry there was a carton which I wasn't allowed to touch, sitting alongside other things that weren't touchable, like the Vim and my father's shoe polish. The carton had got lye inside, which is poison. There was a picture of the devil on the outside, to prove it. He had a red face, red hair, pointed teeth, and a tail going up in a loop, sharp as a serving fork. He didn't look at all like my grandfather. My mother kept a photograph of him in a silver frame on the table next to her bottle of Wincarnis. I wasn't allowed to touch that either. The picture was in black and white. When my mother did her hair, or sometimes when she slept, I would sit on the stool by her bed and stare at him, and think about the devil inside. I reasoned that his face could be red in real life, and he wasn't smiling, so he could easily have pointed teeth. In the photograph, he looked uncomfortable. That would be the tail, doing that: he'd be sitting on it. In his little round eyeglasses, I could see someone else standing a long way off. Two someone elses, one in each eye, holding a bright thing in the air above their heads. I imagined this was a cross of fire to ward off my grandfather, sitting there having his photograph taken. I wanted to compare him with the devil on the box of lye, put the pictures side by side, see if they made a pair, but I couldn't get them together in the same room if they were not to be touched. I tried to memorize them instead: the devil was easy, his wide grin and his hair so red; but my grandfather - he just looked like any old man, any plain old man in the world. And then one day I saw for myself how not like the devil he was.

We lived near the lanes, in Bath House Yard. We'd always been there, so I knew all the faces round about: next door to us was a tiny woman called Mrs Moon, with no husband and four children all alike; and in the corner lived two brothers with a bulldog that bit your legs when you ran past. Across the yard was the knife-grinder. He did the rounds on his bike. When he came home, he'd leave it in the yard outside his window. There were cloths tied to the back, and a basket full of tools on the front. The dog never messed with him. He preferred the butcher, who lived in the rooms on top of us. I didn't know the butcher's name, and hardly saw him in the daytime, but I heard him, moving above my head in the morning, singing when he came home at night. Sometimes I looked out of my window to watch him staggering up the steps; he'd be hanging on to the railing like a man at sea, with the bulldog snipping at his boots, waiting for him to slip. It was easy to slip on the steps; the whole yard-end was leaning one way, as if any minute it would run off through the gutter and down into the city. My father said it was because of the quarrying underneath. We lived on lime, he said. My mother said it was the ghosts that made things tilt. If anything happened in our house, she blamed it on the ghosts.

They made everything slant. Our front door turned out onto a path of cobbles made of flint. They looked like pigs' knuckles laid out flat. Except they didn't stay flat, they sloped, and when it rained, the water came in under the door. My father put up a low wall around our door to stop the water. Everyone in the yard admired it, but no one wanted one of their own.

My grandfather came to see us just after I'd started at school. According to my father, it was because I didn't go often enough. In truth, I hardly went at all. My father came to collect me at the end of the first week, and found me sitting at the back of the room at a little table, just me on my own. While all the rest of the children were doing the alphabet, I was sticking felt animals on a board.

Call that learning? he asked the teacher, who could only say that the idea of learning was beyond some of us and it was nothing to be ashamed of.

She'll not be shoved in a corner, my father said, To be forgotten.

After that, I didn't go any more.

My grandfather paid a visit to Talk Some Sense into us. My father wasn't worried, he said the Moon children never got any bother, did they, and anyway, he wanted me at home. It wasn't as if I missed going to school. I liked to play in the yard. I'd join in Ring-a-Roses with Josie and Pip Moon, but if the bulldog was out and about, I'd sit on the butcher's steps with my legs tucked underneath me. The day it all changed, I was doing just that.

A grey man came and stood at the wall. He had a hat in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. From where I was sitting, I could see the bald bit on the top of his head. He didn't knock on the door, and he didn't say anything, he just looked up at me. He reminded me of someone I knew.

You must be Lillian, he said, after a bit. He sounded friendly, but I couldn't answer back. My father has told me I must not speak to strangers, and I wasn't sure whether he counted. So I just looked at him. After a minute, he tried again.

You are Lillian, aren't you?

It's a trick question, I thought. Then I thought, Maybe I am a Lillian? And ran down to ask my father. I'm always getting stuck with my name, but Lillian at that moment sounded important, and the way he said it, the grey-faced man, made it more familiar than my other name, which my father always calls me by. It's Patsy, my other name. My father thought it was important too. When I told him what the man said, he ran like a rat from the bedroom where my mother was kept, straight through the living room, jumping the wall out the front. I'd never seen him run like that, pushing me aside as if he was fleeing the devil, not rushing to greet him. When I followed, he shouted.

You stay there! Don't move!

I stayed right where he pointed, on the doorstep, and watched as the two of them had words. The piece of paper was exchanged. My father turned without looking back and grabbed me by the hand. He had a fierce grip. He was squeezing my fingers in one hand and the piece of paper in the other. He slammed the door on the man, unfurled the paper in front of the fire and burnt it straight away.

Who was that man? I asked, watching the paper curling blue.

That was your grandad, was all he said. Then he went in to my mother.

It was the first time I'd seen my grandfather in colour. He did look like the photograph. I wanted to ask him why he called me by the wrong name and why my father thinks he is the devil.

After a bit, I went into my mother's room. She was lying on her side, with my father sitting on the stool next to the bed. They stopped talking and looked at me. The shutters were closed. I went to the window and opened them a crack to see out. The man who was my grandfather was still there, waiting, his hands hanging open at his sides. I thought he might wave, but if he saw me he didn't show it. He was staring straight at the door, eyeing it just like the bulldog eyes me. I wanted to compare him to his picture. I glanced over to where my mother kept it, but the frame had been turned face down on the table.

Come away from there, Pats, said my father.

But he's still there!

Come away now, he said.

My mother gave a slow blink. She didn't talk much, but she didn't need to; her blinking said it all. It said she wasn't going to get up and let him in, and I really shouldn't ask questions at a time like this, or stand near the window like that, for everyone in the yard to see our business.

Why did he call me Lillian? I asked. No one spoke. I asked again.

My mother's eyes were shut now. My father took a breath,

I'll tell you in a bit. Go and put the kettle on for your mam.

I did as I was told. But I knew if I looked out of the window I would see the man again, standing still and waiting like a dog.

* * *

Soon after that, the photograph of my grandfather disappeared entirely, and the frame was put on the sideboard with the glass cracked and nothing behind it but white. And then one morning, the frame was gone too. It was the time of the ghosts. It was the time, my father decided, that I should learn history.

Chapter Two

It's May 1930: a war has begun. Two men are standing in the shadow of a church inside which I'm about to be christened. Here is my mother's father, thin-lipped under his furious moustache, and standing a foot away, black hair slicked and shining, is my father. He would rather stand somewhere else to argue; the wind is so low and bitter, even the headstones look as if they're ducking out of the way. But there's hardly any room, what with the graves and my pram and the bells. Eight colossal bells are lined up on the edge of the path, their dark skirts tilted to the sky. They are hulled and empty, apart from the largest one at the far end, which houses a small boy enjoying a cigarette. His legs, stretched out from the lip of the bell, are the only bits of him that are visible.

It's a fine spring day, despite the cold. I am wrapped in a shawl and covered with blankets to keep me warm. Underneath the layers, I'm wearing a white christening robe. My mother wore it when she was christened, and her father before her. In between times, it has been folded up in paper and stored in a trunk in my grandfather's house. It has been handed down. I'm wearing a bonnet too, which has not been handed down: it's new as mint. It's a sap, according to my father, a sap to my grandfather. This bonnet covers my hair completely.

The men don't enter the church, they close in among the bells, as if in hiding from the world. This is a private conflict.

Lillian! says my grandfather, It's been decided.

It's Patricia, says my father, We agreed on Patricia!

I agreed to nothing.

Both men stand firm; they would like to fight, hands round each other's necks, rolling over on the stubbled grass like a pair of urchins. But they are aware of the boy, his feet dabbling the path as they whisper at each other, and the two men keep their hands to themselves, pulling on their own suits, fingering their cuffs. My father aims a kick at the nearest bell, half hoping it would let out a peal, some sound to break the silence. The bells look helpless lying down like this; unarmed, naked.

He first saw them last spring, up in the belfry. He was one of the gang of men who climbed St Giles tower, and came quickly back to earth again, their hands stinging with fear, legs like water. My father tried to grip the wooden guide rail as he tumbled down and the whole piece came away, thin as splints. The beams had rotted to dust, but it wasn't this that made the men afraid. They had been standing in a careful circle around the nest of bells. It was just a slight tremor to begin with, so that my father thought the foreman behind him was having a joke, jockeying the slats they stood on; and then a deep rumble which turned everything to jelly: the sky outside, the frantic bats, the bells swaying in the grit air. All to jelly. The bells didn't seem so harmless then. A month later, people were still talking about the earthquake that shook the city. Another month, and the work to fix the beams was lost: the bells needed to come down, and it was not a job for a carpenter. My father had met my mother by then.

A year on, and he's staring at the bells once more, his hands are sweating, his legs are water.

You've no right, he says, through his teeth.

No more have you, my grandfather says.

She's my daughter, says my father, I have every right. My grandfather does not reply to this. He closes the discussion,

Anyway. It's been decided.

They are back to the beginning, which to my father seems like no beginning at all, just a curve in the circle. He would let the matter drop; he is my father, after all: he can call me whatever he likes. But this is not his church, and not his parish, and the priest is not his priest. Watton was my father's home. Once a week, knotted at the neck, he went to his own church. It had no crumbling tower, no beacon, and just one solitary bell with a desolate clang. When he left for the city, he thought that he had finally escaped the churches and priests and cold stone mornings. And apart from his wedding and the recce of the bell-tower, he hasn't stepped inside St Giles once. But it wouldn't matter if he was regular in his attendance, it wouldn't matter if he was devout, the priest would not favour him. My father is an incomer, after all. The priest is perfectly civil; he gives all the appearance of benevolence, and a thin smile of welcome. But my father isn't fooled; he knows how things can slip away and splinter, even if they look solid, even if you hold on tight.

My father and grandfather are too busy arguing over a name to notice that someone is missing: my mother is nowhere to be seen. It's not as if she hasn't prepared for the day: she has a long satin dress, a new hat, a pair of handmade silk slippers in cornflower blue, worn just the once, on her wedding day. They're all laid out and ready, but my mother is slow to get up and slow to get dressed; she makes my father impatient. He stalks about the room, then up and down outside the bedroom door until she bleats at him to go. She'll meet him at the church; she promises, emphatically, that she'll be there. My father leaves her; he has to attend to me, after all. I am the reason for everything. The arrangements are all to give me a name; the priest has been summoned to give me a name; my mother has to get out of her bed to witness me being given a name; the two men standing outside the church are arguing about my name. It has passed from simmering disagreement to bellowing rage.

Lillian! shouts my mother's father.

Patricia! goes my father.

Lillian Patricia Lillian Patricia. The boy in the bell listens, dabbles his feet, flicks the dog-end of his smoke onto the path. He'd go for Patricia, but they won't ask him for an opinion, nor anyone else. No one will come to save the day, to offer a compromise, to make a show of peace, despite the sending of the lace-edged invitation cards. The acquaintances will stay away. This family is tight as a fist.

Continues...

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Excerpted from remember me by Trezza Azzopardi Copyright © 2004 by Trezza Azzopardi. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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