Clare Azzopardi

(1977) is an award-prevailing writer who writes for each children and adults. She is the top of department of Maltese on the university of Malta Junior university and for the beyond numerous years has been an lively member of Inizjamed, an NGO whose undertaking is to sell literature in Malta and abroad. With Inizjamed, she has co-organised literary fairs and workshops, regularly in collaboration with Literature across Frontiers (LAF). Her work has been translated into several languages and has seemed in some of collections inclusive of Transcript, In recognition, Cúirt 21, Skald, words without borderlines and Novel of the sector. Her play L-Interdett Taħt is-Sodda became published in French (Éditions Théâtrales, 2008) and in Arabic (I-ACT, 2009). Azzopardi has also posted 2 books of brief tales for adults, both of which received the countrywide book Prize for Literature – Il-Linja l-Ħadra (The green Line) and Kulħadd ħalla isem warajh (The names they left behind). Her latest series was published in Croatian (VBZ) and Hungarian (Noran Libro Kiado). lots of her testimonies where published in literary magazines together with phrases without borderlines and Asymptote. Clare Azzopardi took component in numerous fairs and in 2016 she become selected as one in all Europe’s New Voices.

The Habitat of Silence

Silence is a foreign language. we all speak it however it’s so hard to give an explanation for.

believe sitting next to a loved one, on a bench on top of the world, overlooking fields and trees and sporadic homes, with a faint glimpse of the ocean a ways, some distance away, and no longer announcing a single phrase. now not because you don’t have some thing to speak approximately but because you don’t need to.

Now imagine the self-identical scenario, but put off the loved one and replace him or her with a person else, a person whose silence is filled with reticence, reluctance, secrecy. That quiet eloquence right now dissolves into a murky puddle of ambiguity, confounding you as to what constitutes the correct response: combat or flight? talk up or respond in type?

Amanda, the principle character in Castillo, Clare Azzopardi’s debut novel for adults, unearths herself confronted with such a conundrum. Having been deserted by way of her mother as a little girl, she become then left under the care of her father, whose taciturnity approximately subjects regarding his spouse in addition compounded the confusion. Now, married and with a younger daughter, Amanda is going on a quest to find out what she will be able to about her deceased aunt, novelist Cathy Penza, her mother’s dual sister.

some of the characters in Castillomake it a habit of living in silence. There are long dialogues within the novel which inform us precisely not anything, a barrage of tos and fros that lead exactly nowhere. this is extraordinarily irritating for Amanda because she is faced at every flip with an impenetrable wall of silence. She seems for folks who do no longer need to be determined, folks that do not want to speak to her, and this activates her to search for which means (and answers) in spaces that lie outdoor of speech.

which includes in abandoned houses, a trope that is a great deal loved by way of Ms Azzopardi. fixtures and personal assets, left as they have been, are a powerful testament to the character of the individual who used to inhabit that particualr space. The silence of an deserted room, the silence of an deserted item, are eloquent in a manner which some of the humans that Amanda encounters are not.

but, even that is tricky. for instance, Amanda’s first visit to Cathy’s residence occurs vicariously. a person close to her describes what she determined whilst she went to have a look after Cathy’s demise but we recognize that this narrator may be very unreliable. each new piece of records which Amanda finds appears to cast a completely long shadow over the tales that she already knows, obfuscating reality and reality, having one in all likelihood apart from the alternative.

This uncertainty is personified in Cathy herself, a Laura Palmer figure who haunts the pages of the ebook so poignantly and so pervasively, basically because we never get to meet her. She is many stuff to many humans, some thing that is underscored through her severa monikers and via her distinct personas: an envied sister, a beloved aunt, a lover whose call one dares no longer communicate, a bestselling novelist. In truth, it is through the latter position that we get to hear a near approximation of her voice: an authorial one whose ephemerality accentuates the silences which permeate the book.

In a sense, what Amanda is looking for is a story, tales that imbue the void with meaning, with cause. Blacking out portions of her past robbed her of agency – she have become not not like the snap shots peppering the first few pages of Castillo, a spectral presence to be gazed at.

Klarissa, Amanda’s young daughter, stands in for a new generation who, hopefully, may be unfastened from reticence, reluctance, secrecy. She’s on the cusp of talking, uttering some phrases right here and there, enforcing her own stamp on reality, whether or not it’s expressive or descriptive. Amanda is determined not to permit her daughter be bogged down in the equal sort of silence that has affected her so much. numerous humans statement on how lovely Klarissa’s name is, stressing each and each syllable. In this example, the pauses among syllables assemble meaning, an identification, they don’t burn up it. So it appears that evidently it’s no longer handiest Amanda who’s reacting to this void but the other characters as well.

where is Clare Azzopardi in all of this? Her voice is in reality the quietest, a faint whisper that one lines to pay attention amidst the overwhelming silence. however her hand is visible for the duration of, on every page, in every paragraph and in each meticulously crafted sentence. Ms Azzopardi’s absolute mastery of the language and of the technique of story-telling, permit her to recede into the heritage and to agree with the characters to inform their story. that is no useless praise. Re-examine Ms Azzopardi’s preceding paintings, Kulħadd ħalla isem warajh, and also you’ll realize precisely what I suggest. Castillo is even higher.

(etc....)

Books by Clare Azzopardi

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