Memory weaves through a tale of loss

Winterton Blue
By Trezza Azzopardi
Grove Press, 288 pages, $24

How do we emerge from the emotional black holes that consume us when we lose those we love? The question lies at the heart of this hypnotic novel by Trezza Azzopardi, in which dark memories can be neither embraced nor eluded.

For Lewis, a tormented man who works odd jobs in the English town of Cardiff, the death of his twin brother , Wayne , 20 years ago in a reckless car accident has left him obsessed with finding the driver, their troublemaking boyhood friend Carl, ostensibly to recover Wayne's epilepsy bracelet but really to wreak revenge. Lewis was also in the car, and his guilt at surviving is overwhelming.

But loss can take many forms, including the absence of loving parents. Lewis and Wayne's father died when they were young. Lewis is further anguished by the recollection of his mother's disappointment at the hospital after the accident at learning that Wayne, rather than he, had died. She also claimed Wayne lost oxygen during childbirth, having been born too long after Lewis, causing his seizures and other disabilities.

Anna, an artsy London woman, feels compelled to care for her elderly mother , Rita, who was recently injured in a fall at her bed - and - breakfast on the coast in Yarmouth. Here, too, parental love is scant and psychologically treacherous, as the bitter, flamboyant Rita has long disapproved of Anna's having no boyfriend and appearing disheveled, ridiculing her since childhood.

Anna adored her cheating father, who died when she was young. She seeks Rita's approval, with a tourmaline ring of Rita's playing a similar symbolic role for Anna as the bracelet does for Lewis. But she is driven to come to terms with her father's death, which haunts her like Wayne's death does Lewis. "Anna keeps her memories of her father under water. She doesn't know how long after he died that she started to do this, or if it's normal, even, but she understands and in some way approves of the simplicity of the connection; her father died at the age when she began to learn to swim."

Anna and Lewis meet at the bed-and-breakfast, which is near an ocean wind farm where Lewis believes Carl might be. They are quickly and powerfully drawn to each other out of a mutual sense of loss, perhaps too much so to be plausible. They find a way to fill the emptiness and move on, not in the cliche d manner one might expect, but in a more sophisticated, realistic manner far truer to life.

The novel would have been stronger had ancillary characters been more involved, like Anna's friend Brendan, Rita's lover Vernon, and Carl's father , Manny. The dialect might be daunting to those unfamiliar with it; if you don't know what recce means, look it up. The stream-of-consciousness narrative suits themes of memory, but is convoluted. The motifs, especially water, are so impressively subtle that they draw attention from the story itself. But these are mere quibbles, as "Winterton Blue" resonates.