The Hiding Place

Frankie Gauci, a Maltese immigrant with a weakness for cards, loses everything he owns, the café included, on the night his sixth daughter, Dolores, is born; he had bet she would be a boy. Months later a fire costs the baby most of one hand. Dolores tells the family's story in fragments, as a child sees it: the gaming rooms, cafés and crumbling houses of Tiger Bay, Frankie's Maltese associates, a mother who grows ever more fragile, and sisters who are given away, married off or sent to a home. At the centre is the elusive Fran, blamed for the fires. Thirty years on, the scattered sisters return for their mother's funeral, and Dolores tries to understand what broke her family.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Migration (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, 1960s

First published

2000

Author's age

39 when first published

ISBN

9780330390750 (Picador, United Kingdom)

9780871138156 (Atlantic Monthly Press, United States)

9780802138590 (Grove Press, United States)

9781035091515 (Picador, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata