Biblio's Bloggins

Books now read in ’07: 33
Title: Winterton Blue
Author: Trezza Azzopardi
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 4-19
Pages: 271

I’ve been a fan of Welsh writer Trezza Azzopardi since her first book, The Hiding Place. Winterton Blue, her third novel, keeps me solidly in her camp.

Azzopardi writes small books about broken people. This is not too say that her writing is insignificant. Azzopardi is a skillful writer – one of those novelist who often cause you to pause to admire a turn of phrase or the way she has allowed a scene to unfold – and an insightful one. Small books, yes, but tender and finely wrought.

Winterton Blue is a love story, although the two lovers do not meet until more than 100 pages into the novel and because their relationship is not finally determined until . . . well, to say would constitute a spoiler and I won’t go there. The lovers, Lewis and Anna, are damaged people. Anna by the early death of her father and a manipulative, yet loving mother. Lewis is haunted by the death of his twin brother.

Winterton Blue is about the struggle to find love, and to keep it. At one point in the novel Anna is told of Lewis, “He’s dangerous to love.” I think that on some level that’s true of us all.

This is a fine book. Azzopardi is a superb writer.