Winterton Blue: A Novel [Paperback]

Trezza Azzopardi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 21, 2007

“Beryl Bainbridge, Muriel Spark, and Graham Greene all come to mind, but Azzopardi’s style is all her own.”—Chicago Tribune

New York Times Editors’ Choice, the breathtaking third novel from Booker Prize finalist and national best-selling author Trezza Azzopardi is at once a powerful love story and an intricately plotted mystery that explores the staying power of family and memory, and the pull of unlikely but destined romance. For twenty years Lewis has been haunted by his brother’s death. Try as he might to escape this tragedy, the ghost of Wayne confronts him at every turn. When he meets Anna, a young woman who is also haunted—by her loud and carefree mother, Rita, who just so happens to be very much alive—Lewis is pulled into a world of carousing, music hall turns, and cocktails as he searches for the person he believes responsible for the death of his brother. Against the backdrop of the Norfolk coast with its massive skies and relentless seas, Anna and Lewis slowly learn to trust each other and accept that an uncertain future can be as wild and alluring as the landscape they have grown to love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Anna, a graphic designer, may have a streak of gray in her hair, but she's still young and inchoate. Lewis, a dodgy loner, is on a late, misguided, oedipally fueled quest to avenge his twin brother's death following a car accident 20 years earlier. In alternating scenes—sometimes whole chapters, sometimes just a few paragraphs—Anna and Lewis meet, and, uneasily, inflame each other at a British seaside B&B. The place is owned by Anna's mother, Rita, who at 76 is vivacious but in shaky health; Anna has been summoned there by Rita's quasi- companion, retired actor Vernon Savoy, to look in on her. Anna, partially deaf (perhaps psychologically) since childhood, seems so vulnerable, and Lewis (who is tracking down the death car's driver), so blankly menacing, that as they come together murder seems as likely as romance. Vernon, meanwhile, has little patience for Anna's ambivalence toward Rita. The Welsh-born Azzopardi, whose Hiding Place was a Man Booker finalist, does certain kinds of interiority exquisitely, as when writing about Anna's obsession with Rita's tourmaline ring. But her extreme stream-of-consciousness style forces readers to fill in narrative gaps, offers few clues to Anna's feeling for Lewis and makes secondary characters (Anna's charming maybe-suitor Brendan; Lewis's thuggish-yet-sweet sometime-stepfather Manny) confuse more than thicken the plot. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

English novelist Azzopardi portrays with extraordinary empathy characters whose grief and alienation overwhelm their sanity. In The Hiding Place (2001) and Remember Me (2004), she set her acutely sensitive characters within richly drawn social contexts. Here, in her most impressionistic novel, Azzopardi leaves the larger sphere out of focus, concentrating on the wounded psyches of two strangers. Lewis and Anna are on desperately improvised missions of healing as they unknowingly move toward each other on their way to Yarmouth's wind-roughened coast. Volatile Lewis is plagued by guilt and rage over his twin brother's death some 20 years ago. Easily undone Anna, an artist charming in her quirkiness, frets over her devil-may-care mother, and is lured out of her shell by the sea's moody beauty and the surreal sight of a wind farm. It was a gamble to isolate her brooding characters to emphasize their feelings of apartness, a limiting approach rectified by the mesmerizing novel's strong undercurrent of suspense. Azzopardi casts a blue spell brightened by flashes of humor and promises of love. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (December 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802143490
• ISBN-13: 978-0802143495
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,648,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love in a fog, July 2, 2007

By 

Jupiter Reader (Jupiter, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Winterton Blue: A Novel (Paperback)

If disfunctional families are your thing, Winterton Blue, beautifully written, is the book for you. If you can imagine Azzopardi writing a love story in a dark, dank cellar in England, then you won't be surprized that the characters reek of uncertaintly, distrust, violence, and tiny hints of joy.

2.0 out of 5 stars Unabrid Audio 7cds VERY SLOW MOVING, October 2, 2008

By 

Barbara Lane "Audio Books only" (Sydney Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Winterton Blue (Audio CD)

I need a story that can grab me and take me away. This story definately did not do that. I listen to audio stories while I work all the time and the day normally flies by. But with this story the narrator was excellent but even with his help, after 3 cds I kept on making an excuse to turn it off and try again later. Took me days to finish where normally I would finish a story in a day because I can't bear to turn it off.

Anna really doesn't get on with her mother. Anna detests her mothers boyfriend Vernon and she is critical of others and herself. She is unable to hang onto a man or hold down a job. Anna is buried in her own resentment.

I would give this story a 2 and 1/2 star if possible. There was only only 1 review on this story when I purchased it. Wish there had been more and I would not have wasted my money.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's a Book, It's a Story, October 3, 2008

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Winterton Blue: A Novel (Paperback)

Hate to say it, but the book doesn't live up to any of the hype about Trezza Azzopardi's writing. Yes she does a good job of differentiating her characters, and they have lots of background story and color, but so what. The story itself just seems to plod along, not really going anywhere fast or even slowly. I couldn't get next to any of the characters, because mostly they had absurdly ego-centric sensibilities.

So the question is, is the book worth reading? If you like strange quirky characters, who you don't have to like, and that end up in quirky weird situation (all of their own making), then you'll probably like this book. If not, you won't. Keep in mind that the book was published in 2007 and only has three reviews.

Zeb Kantrowitz