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Customer Reviews (329)

Mantel's Wolf Hall
It is hard to believe that a Human Being can write so splendid story about the Tudors and its world

Wolf Hall
This book Wolf Hall has not arrived. All communication with seller is totally frustrating. Book was ordered n Sept.23.
What do I do?
Seller is sbd- Totally not reliable!!!
The I hate it star is for the service ,not the novel

Ms. Mantel, you lost me at "he"
Sorry, Ms. Mantel, but you lost me at "he".Sentences like "Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen" would have been easier for me to understand if you'd told me this was Thomas Cromwell, your protagonist.I got so twisted by the overuse of this pronoun, I had to stop reading.Picking up the audio version didn't make it any easier.I could keep the female straight - weren't that many - but the men ... not a one.

Back to basics for me.Thankfully, "The Brothers Karamazov" was next on my list.Now THAT one I could understand!

could have been but NOT
I love Tudor history and fiction so was excited about this one. BUT, agree with other reviewers that her use of pronouns was confusing. You were never sure what Cromwell was thinking or feeling. TOO LONG. Interesting to learn about Cromwell's family life but his cruelty was downplayed and of course we never get to see his downfall. I skimmed quite a bit just to see what else happened, but could not stay with it. Not a keeper - it goes to a used book store. Disappointing.

A new take on Tudor history
When I ordered Wolf Hall, I was thinking:Ho, hum, another version of the Six Wives of Henry VIII.But the point of view of the author and the dramatic selection of historical scenes and intimate conversations made me go, wow!It was brilliantly written, historically accurate and a real page turner. ... Read more

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This is a huge, complex novel, but the author has done her homework. ThoughDanton, Robespierre, and Desmoulins are at the center of her story, they areby no means the only major characters who populate the novel. Mantel useshistorical figures as well as fictional ones to provide different points ofview on the story. As she moves from one to the next, her narrativevoice changes back and forth from first to third person as she sometimesgrants us access to her characters' deepest thoughts and feelings, andother times keeps us guessing. A Place of Greater Safety is a happymarriage of literary and historical fiction, and a bona fide page-turner,as well. --Margaret Prior ... Read more

Customer Reviews (35)

Kindle Edition?
Why is this title not available on the Kindle to US readers? It is available to Kindle users from other nations...like it's available on Amazon UK, for example. Will this change?

THIS IS A NOVEL ABOUT THE MAKING OF A MONSTER.....
This novel is about the making of a monster. Of course, it's about more than that. The book is too rich and full and alive to limit itself to the evolution of one character to the exclusion of the rich world outside but the central thread of this exceptional book is the slow drift of one man's idealism toward the acceptance of tyranny. (At one point, in a heated argument, Danton says to Robespierre, "It's you idealists who make the best tyrants.") There are literally hundreds of characters in this book, but at the heart of it lie the three conspirators, sometime friends and sometimes allies Georges-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre. All three giants. Without Danton, the French Revolution would have died as it began. Desmoulins was its greatest pamphleteer. Robespierre ruled over the Committee of Public Safety, which ordered and stage managed the murder of all enemies the Committee imagined.

Danton -gross body, scarred face, nonetheless attractive to women, a charismatic speaker--he was a friend of Desmoulins. Sometime antagonist, sometime collaborator, his relationship with Robespierre was more complex. Desmoulins -erratic, sexually ambivalent- had a genius for making the right friends: his friendship with Robespierre protected him until near the end, when Robespierre, with much hand wringing, abandoned him to public justice and the guillotine. At the beginning, physical violence so disturbs Robespierre that it makes him physically ill. He's ascetic, pinched -Danton makes fun of him as a little monk--he forsakes all private life and pleasure the better to serve the republic. But the republic is a mother who eats her children. By the end, Robespierre coldbloodedly betrays Danton and abandons Desmoulins, signs their arrest warrants and consigning them to the tender mercies of the courts. In the interest of the state,emotions like compassion and friendship must be sacrificed. Justice and truth are unimportant in the face of public security. Soon it's chop, chop, bye bye, no more Danton, no more Desmoulins.

It is impossible to say too much positive about this book. It is that good. It is truly exceptional, filled with lightning characterizations of a succession of fascinating characters.Here's Desmoulins:

Once paper and ink were to hand, it was useless to appeal to his better nature, to tell him he was wrecking reputations and ruining people's lives. A kind of sweet venom flowed through his veins, smoother than the finest cognac, quicker to make the head spin. And, just as some people crave opium, he craves the opportunity to exercise his fine art of mockery, vituperation and abuse; laudanum might quieten the senses, but a good editorial puts a catch in the throat and a skip in the heartbeat. Writing's like running downhill; can't stop if you want to.

And Danton on Robespierre: "He feels something, in his heart, and then he sits down and works out the logic of it, in his head. Then he says the head part came first; and we believe him."

Camille's wife, Lucille: "Her emotions now seemed to lie just beneath the surface, scratching at her delicate skin to be hatched."

Mirabeau, Lafayette, Philippe Egalite, Louis and Marie Antoinette, Marat and Hebert, Saint-Just, Madame and Monsieur Roland, Fabre d'Eglantine --they all come alive in these pages.

Early in the novel, the Marquis de Lafayette, feeling hopeless out of date in the tumult of real social revolution, shakes his head and wonders: "Where do they come from, these people? They're virgins. They've never been to war.... They've never killed an animal, let alone a man. But they're such enthusiasts for murder."

By the end of this novel, there are no more virgins.

Good Intentions that led to the Terror
Hilary Mantel brings her unique writing style to the French Revolution. She follows from childhoodthe lives of men and women who became leaders of the bloody rebellion that brought the king and queen of France, the French aristocracy (including Lafayette) and ultimately these leaders as well to the guillotine. Good intentions (and greed) led to severed heads as "the Revolution ate its children." Vivid, gory but elegant writing.

A Novel of the French Revolution
During the XIXth. Century, French and English historical novels approached the French Revolution only indirectly: We know that Balzac's Old Goriot was a Robespierre-friendly Jacobin, but his political career is not shown on the novel; Stendhal's Sorel dreams of reviving Napoleon but eventually becomes an upstart during the Bourbon restoration; Dickens' Tale of Two Cities is more a novel on the black legend of the Revolution than on the Revolution itself. Ms. Mantel has had the merit, therefore, of tackling the Great Revolution head-on, by making Robespierre, Desmoulins and Danton her novel's chief characters and addressing them in a highly subjective mode, by means of the stream of consciousness and internal monologue. In that, she is always witty and intersting. By doing that, however, she has alienated herself from the actual causes of the Revolution and spoused the usual, very British, and very reactionary Burkean version of the Revolution being a bloodbath caused by the individual ambitions of disgruntled middle class intellectual upstarts - a view that a conservative and monarchist like Balzac was careful not to adopt, in that he saw the need of the French aristocracy of his time to reconcile itself with legitimate revolutionary aspirations. Notwithstanding that, I must say that Ms. Mantel's inability to understand the French Revolution is in itself intersting and says a lot about our present - but isn't that the role of a proper historical novel?

Wolf Hall is much the better book: A comparison
Rating books, like giving Academy Awards, can never really be an objective process.I'm actually rating Hilary Mantel here within a range based on her ability, as I perceive it, rather than rating this book "among all books," because I read a lot and I would end up giving Mantel all 5 stars because she's a great writer and there are so few really great writers.Mantel's style, which is very idiosyncratic, worked much better to the purpose in Wolf Hall than it did in A Place of Greater Safety, in my opinion, because 1) WH concerns fewer people, so it wasn't diluted and confused with so many characters but focused mostly on Cromwell, 2) the period discussed in WH is more given to social and ideological analysis, while APOGS illumines the French Revolution which in our imagination is a time of action.There is very little action, or even high "color," in APOGS and that absence was really felt, and 3) a huge element in Mantel's style is her ironic and playful sense of humor, which for me worked in WH but not so much in APOGS: even though very little of the bloody mayhem of the Revolution was depicted in the book, we all know it occurred, even from reading a brief history or A Tale of Two Cities.Presenting the characters through a lot of light hearted humor and witty chat while imagining the guillotine working overtime didn't work as well for me. The tone didn't depict the threatening atmosphere that must have prevailed. For these reasons, I never really was drawn into APOGS the way I was with WH: it didn't have the dramatic, emotional or philosophical strength.

Speaking of A Tale of Two Cities (which I just re-read), another reviewer here felt that Mantel's style lay somewhere between that of Dickens and Tolstoy.I can see that viewpoint but decided that, for me, her style is strangely more like Shakespeare's.Not quite in the power or poetry of the language of course, but in the use of dialogue, humor, representation of all social levels, historical background and a wonderful immediacy and modernity to the speech.Many people are bothered by Mantel's too contemporary, slangish use of language, but I think it can work if done well and Mr. Shakespeare did too, a man known for juxtaposing the sublime with the ridiculous within one scene and taking many liberties with history for dramatic effect. ... Read more

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Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. Thirty years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and thirty years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
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Customer Reviews (10)

Great British Author
I didn't discover Hilary Mantel until two weeks ago when I read a July 2005 New Yorker magazine (I don't remember the week).All I can say is that I thought I was well read, but now I wonder.No, I AM well read! So how have I missed this great author?And why, I demand to know, hasn't she won a Booker Prize?

Anyway, in the two weeks since my discovery, I have read "A Change of Climate" and "Fludd".I now have before me "A Place of Greater Safety" which I hungrily look forward to.In fact, I plan to read all of her books.I even considered becoming one of those nuts who dedicates a web page to his or her favorite author.I won't, however, but not because Mantel is unworthy of such adulation, but because, well, I am not a nut.

Finally, please allow me do the reader of "A Change of Climate" a great favor: do not read the back cover, as it tells way too much of the story.Instead, trust Mantel to tell you the story.You won't be disappointed.Great writing and great story.

Family secrets
Instinctively, people know that when a pain is too great to be endured, it is appropriate to wait until it can be more rationally confronted. But there is always the danger of pushing the pain so far away that it becomes inaccessible, if never, ever forgotten. "To some people great grief is an indecency...They blame the bereaved."

After a stunning tragedy in Africa, where Ralph and Anna Eldred have gone as missionaries, they return home, cautioning their family never to speak of the horror they have endured. It is relegated to the past, where it will stay. The Eldred's are compliant people, particularly Ralph, a man of good intentions who works for the family charitable trust, providing necessities, such as food, clothing and shelter for those less fortunate. But for their brief years in Africa and the trauma they suffer on the Dark Continent, the Eldred's personify the spirit of missionary life.

Once again residing in England providing for the downtrodden, Anna and Ralph live out a self-effacing routine. As a Christian, Ralph believes in service, so compassionate that he cannot turn away from those in need. Covertly, Ralph is concerned that people will mistake him for a man who loves mankind in general, but not persons in particular. However, this is exactly how he is perceived, soldiering on for over twenty years after the tragedy, burying himself in the trivia of everyday obligations. His endless pursuit of virtue in hopes of atonement can never be realized.

Meanwhile, Anna suffers grievously for Ralph's neglect, enduring a constant ache, her own survival defined by the ever-present needs of her four children. Anna has paid a terrible price for her silence all these years. Ralph grows more distant and preoccupied, Anna more edgy and neither expects the emotional eruption when Ralph falls into a romantic entanglement with a local woman.

Mantel is gifted writer, dissecting her character's motivations with elegant precision, especially their great missionary hubris, the vagrant self-congratulatory thoughts that creep into even the most well-meant acts, as the couple seeks to bury the past under the weight of the present. Layer upon layer, the author builds a structure that appears sturdy but ultimately collapses under the weight of grief and silence. Whether the couple recovers will be determined by their spiritual strengths and human weaknesses, the delicate balance between expectations and reality. Luan Gaines/2004.

We Know These People
This is the first novel of Hilary Mantel that I've read, and I'm eager to read more. Her style is her strength: she is a keen observer of human character, human fraility, human environments, and she describes the environment, emotions and atmospheres with a crystal clarity. For example, her paragraph about the end of a semester caused me to relive those times: "only dogged by that usual feeling of anticlimax the end of exams brings. After this, you think, after my papers are over, I will do, and I will do ... and then you don't. You are a shell, enclosing outworn effort. You expect a sense of freedom, and yet you feel trapped in the same old body, the same drab routines; you expect exhilaration, and you only feel a kind of habitual dullness, a letdown, a perverse longing for the days when you read and made notes and sat up all night."

Mantel's characters are muddlers. They muddle through life with good intentions, but feel displaced and unsatisfied. Yet you care for them, and say to yourself, "I know these people!" There are many robust characters [Ralph and Anna, missionaries in Africa; their children, searching for their place in the world; Ralph's sister Emma] and threads interwoven through the basic story. The main characters are Ralph and Anna, missionaries who go to Africa to "do good". Evil events there haunt their lives when they return to England.

The novel is written as an "entertaining read", in a page-turning style -- you are interested in the characters and events. Yet it is a substantial work, addressing important themes: good versus evil, do our choices make a difference, the cost of cultural misunderrstandings, the loss of faith, how any sense of security is an illusion. While entertaining, Mantel is not afraid of the artist's obligation to tell us unpalatable truths about ourselves.

My one complaint is that the ending was too predictable; I felt that the novel was "wrapped up", rather than allowed to find its own ending.

British Sensibilities
Save your money.Or, if you need to spend it, buy plain yogurt -- you will find the bland white stuff much more exciting than this novel. If you do buy this book, you will wade through pages and pages waiting for the story to get started and then you will not care about a single character you meet.In the course of the book, there are love affairs, savage beatings, and a kidnapping or two, and all these incidents unfold without an ounce of passion, desire, or emotion.Anna, the long suffering wife, is so strangled that she can't bring herself to demand a new washing machine.She and her obtuse husband never talk to each other or to their children.And we are supposed to care about the marriage of these two?Buy yogurt.

This thoughtful family saga evokes a climate for change.
When asked, rhetorically, by his sister, "Whatever happened to the dinosaurs?", Ralph, the main character responds, "Their habitat altered...A change of climate." Inhis rebellion against his parents, their closed,religiously fundamentalist point of view, andhis father's financial blackmailing regarding his career choices, Ralphintentionally changes his physical habitat andhis climate by escaping to South Africa withhis bride.

Working as a lay person at a mission and vigorously opposingapartheid, Ralph and Anna eventually areimprisoned, then banished to Bechuanaland,now Botswana. It is here that the savagery which creates apermanent and terrible climate in their marriage occurs, asavagery not limited to one race as Ralph andAnna had perceived in South Africa.

As the story bouncesfrom the present in England back twenty years to Africa, thereader lives through the vivid and terribleAfrican experiences and simultaneously sees how they havepermeated the lives of these good, but often naïve, people.Both Ralph and Anna have rejected thetraditional religion of their parents in favor of doing good deeds intheir family lives and through a social servicetrust. But as Ralph's uncle James points out,"There is nothing so appallingly hard...as the business of beinghuman."

While the reader cheers asJames grows and eventually embraces life, s/he alsofears for Anna, who remains emotionally closed, despite her gooddeeds, fearful that she "should loseeverything, one of these days." As the events resolvethemselves and the "competition in goodness" comesto an end, we see real humans trying to putaside the petrified past and to change the climate of their lives, and wewill, perhaps, evaluate our own lives.Can weaccept change, or are we dinosaurs at heart? ... Read more

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"Life just arranges itself, usually for the worst and chance is not blind at all."


In 1980s England, it is ten years after the shocking denouement in Every Day is Mother's Day, the characters having moved on with their lives. (While it isn't necessary to read the prior novel, it adds historical context- and menace- to this one.) No longer beleaguered by the spirits who haunted her mother, Evelyn, a medium, the hulking, crafty Muriel is a product of her environment, properly institutionalized for the last few years. Evelyn's death has seemingly put an end to the disturbing case of a mother and daughter living in isolation, successfully avoiding the social workers assigned to them. The other peripheral characters have moved on with their individual lives, unconcerned with the fate of Muriel Axon, "that reclusive slab of a woman".

Social worker Isabel Field, traumatized by her short but violent involvement with the Axon's, has married, but is still plagued by self-doubt and depression, unable to give her husband a child. The brief distraction of her affair with married schoolteacher Colin Sidney in the `70s met a predictable end with the pregnancy of Colin's wife, Sylvia, the social worker just another victim of the folly of loving a married man. Currently, Isabel derives more comfort from the bottle than her husband. For his part, Colin clings to the memories of his affair with Isabel as a respite from Sylvia's incessant carping about their unruly children and the career she might have had. With the impending arrival of their fourth child, the Sidney's have moved house, snapping up the Axon residence as a bargain, next door to Colin's unmarried sister, Florence.

Muriel is the star of the piece, an enigmatic creature whose cunning enables her to escape the tangled bureaucracy of the social welfare system. Ingenious in reentering the world without the taint of her past, Muriel is set on revenge with very specific targets in mind. Her personality forged by a crippling childhood and hostile mother, this single-minded gorgon embodies the dark side of human nature, her stunted emotional growth disguised by an ungainly body, unexpectedly delighted at the coincidences that abet her mission. And while family entanglements baffle both Isabel and the Sidney's, each character plays a part in the final drama, the outcome turning on the erratic behaviors of those who exist on society's margins and the odd coincidence.

Mantel brilliantly contrasts middle-class life and the deceits born of mental illness and chronic institutionalization, from Muriel's crafty assault on the past to Isabel Field's descent into alcoholism, Colin's chronic ineptitude and Sylvia's escalating demands for attention. Although Every Day is Mother's Day and Vacant Possession are separate novels, I imagine them combined into one chilling tale, a seamless narrative of dysfunction and retribution, where "blind chance... could catch you a painful blow with her white cane". Luan Gaines/2010.

Laugh as things fall apart.
I don't think I've ever known a book with such misleading cover blurb. If anyone can "lie back and laugh yourself silly" while reading this, as the UK edition proclaims, I'd like to meet them. Yes it's a satire that hits all its targets, yes it involves situations and characters that are bigger and more grotesque than would occur in real life, but these characters are so sympathetically drawn that you feel for them deeply in their lives, hamstrung as they are by circumstance, coincidence and those family ties that bind. The book is a abject potrayal of Thoreau's dictum that most men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation. If you can laugh yourself silly at that, and I don't belive Mantel intends you to, perhaps you can laugh at all human suffering. The intricately laid out plot reels you in like a thriller, giving hints but never spoiling the twists. I found this book immensely satisfying and Mantel is a fine writer (as I also know from 'Fludd' and 'A Change of Climate') whose work I intend to read more of.

black humor at its best
One doesn't have to have read Martel's previous novel featuring these unsavory characters to enjoy (?) its successor.What a nasty piece of work is our Muriel Axton!Admittedly, her horrendous upbringing by a lunaticmother gives her meager brain sufficient cause to seek sadistic revengeupon those she sees to be her enemies, but how fortuitous it is that fateso often cooperates with her!Martel is positively brilliant at keeping the convoluted plot going full pace at all times --the reader is neverabsolutely certain as to just what will happen, but knows that whateverdoes, it will not be pleasant. The mordant wit is most enjoyable to thoseof us who appreciate such nice touches! Regardless of the genre shechooses, Martel is a gifted writer and a pleasure to read. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (7)

Getting some insight on Hilary Mantel
I've recently become hooked on Hilary Mantel novels and was therefore interested in her memoir. I came to see how parts of her life were incorporated into her fiction. But I was even more impressed at the amount of research that went into "A Safer Place" while she was struggling with her chronic illness and other stresses.

Flailing at Memories
Mantel's memoir seems to prove her own point when, just a few pages in, she writes, "I hardly know how to write about myself.Any style you pick seems to unpick itself before a paragraph is done." Much later in the book, she adds, "Writing about your past is like blundering through your house with the lights fused, a hand flailing for points of reference."

Indeed, Mantel is tentative about what to say about her life and how to say it which raises the question of what she was hoping to accomplish with this effort.

Aside from a few self-reflective comments, I found the first three-fourths of the book, covering her growing up years in England in the 1950's-60's and other biographical stories, to be rather tedious. I almost gave up.

Not until her illness manifests--misdiagnosed as a psychiatric illness--did I find her story compelling. At this point forward, I could grasp what she wanted to expose in this writing: the anger and regret from turning herself over to medical authorities, her Catholic faith's encouragement to deny pain, her sorrow over not having a child, and her conviction that she deserved very little in life. Those themes are encompassing enough for a worthy memoir.

Mantel may be much more accomplished as a fiction writer.I have not read any of her fiction. For this memoir, I wish she could have focused much earlier on the imperative elements of her story.

Giving Up on Mantel
I can well understand the impulse to write memoirs, especially when one is a successful novelist with a built in public. What I find difficult is the reading of them. I am a great admirer of Hilary Mantel's novels, especially Wolf Hall and Beyond Black. I tried doggedly to read to the end of this memoir, beautifully written in the Mantelesque style. But one third through I felt I had made sufficient investment of time, with insufficient return in terms of story-telling power. I found her spinning her sentences along, indulging in soliloquies, singing arias of words. But the payoff was slim. The story line was meager. I needed more, and what I needed was a plot. The amount I read explains the ghostly theme of Beyond Black, but that novel has a taut story line and compelling characters. This memoir was crafted from spun air, and to me was unsatisfying. But Mantel's admirers might possibly have more staying power than I have.

Fascinating glimpse into the life of a great contemporary writer
I love the way Hilary Mantel writes.Her imagery and descriptions are so true, so evocative, sometimes I need to put on a sweater or snuggle deeper into the duvet just to cope.She strings me out and keeps me roped in.I have no other way of expressing just how fine her writing feels to me.When I'm reading her work, I feel that she has tapped into the great reservoir--the man-made basin brimming with pain and suffering, dreams and devils.This book is haunting and grim--yet one identifies so strongly with the author, risk and all.

This memoir is not worth reading..
The cover on the hardback edition and the cover on the paperback caught my attention..but you can't judge this book by its cover. I complete dud!! ... Read more

Product Description
When Frances Shore moves to Saudi Arabia, she settles in a nondescript sublet, sure that common sense and an open mind will serve her well with her Muslim neighbors. But in the dim, airless flat, Frances spends lonely days writing in her diary, hearing the sounds of sobs through the pipes from the floor above, and seeing the flitting shadows of men on the stairwell. It’s all in her imagination, she’s told by her neighbors; the upstairs flat is empty, no one uses the roof. But Frances knows otherwise, and day by day, her sense of foreboding grows even as her sense of herself begins to disintegrate.
Amazon.com Review
Frances Shore has been warned about Saudi Arabia from the wordgo. En route to join her uncommunicative engineer husband, she triesto ignore the rumors and rumblings she has already heard--women can'tdrive, alcohol is illegal, morality regulated. But even she issurprised by the airline steward's surreal lesson. The Saudis are "toobloody secretive to have maps," he tells her. "Besides, the streetsare never in the same place for more than a few weeks altogether."Frances's first morning in her new home is not quite what she mighthave expected. There is no telephone, and Andrew has locked the backdoor behind him (the previous occupant had the front door bricked upso his wife wouldn't encounter her male neighbors). It is, however,similar to the days to come, which oscillate between boredom andfear--the nights broken only by tedious business dinners and sub rosadistilling. When she is allowed outside, she is assailed by officialwarnings--highway signs reading "YOU ARE FAST, BUT DANGER IS FASTER,"a library handout begging, "PLEASE make EVERY effort to return yourbooks if you have to leave the Kingdom hurriedly andunexpectedly." The outside world is ominous enough, but there'salso something odd going on in the apartment building: noise from thesupposedly empty flat above. The title of this blackly humorous,frightening novel begins to sound like a reprieve: Frances and AndrewShore will at least be able to leave the country after 8 months. ButHilary Mantel's final twist destroys any dreams of leaving. As onecharacter had earlier warned: "It isn't the roads in town that aredangerous, it's the roads out." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

A Missed Opportunity - dull and unengaging
I have tried to like Hilary Mantel's novels, honestly, I've tried, but she makes it so hard."Eight Months in Ghazzah Street" is the third Mantel I've read and I just don't understand the hyper-ecstatic raves for her books.I have not enjoyed any that I've read so far (I read Beyond Black and The Giant, O'Brien prior to this one).I find her novels oddly constructed and curiously unengaging.

"Eight Months" could have been a great novel.Could have been.The plot set-up was very promising, with oodles of potential that was never realised.It's 1985 and clueless, young, English expat couple, Andrew and Frances Shore have just arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after accepting a job offer.Instead of being housed in an expat compound, the Shores are housed at a small, claustrophobic block of four apartments.Their neighbours are two Muslim couples and a mysterious, unoccupied apartment directly above them.But is it unoccupied?Mantel attempts to create dramatic tension by building a sense of foreboding about the apartment.Frances swears she hears footsteps, sobs and other strange noises coming from the apartment.There are rumours that the apartment is an illicit love-nest for a minor Saudi Prince. But could it be a torture chamber?Frances's paranoia about the apartment is fed by her female Muslim neighbours with whom she has strange coffee-and-conversation sessions.Their views on life are so diametrically opposed to Frances's, and she never comes to grips with their typically Islamic approach to life.

My main problem with this novel is that it is filled to the brim with two-dimensional, unsympathetic characters.Andrew and Frances, the main characters, are particularly unlikeable and difficult to relate to.The other expat characters are cardboard cut-outs.The Muslim neighbours were by far the most interesting characters.The final chapters of the book dealing with an expat death and the mysterious empty apartment are poorly resolved.We never find out exactly what transpired in the apartment, nor do we find out what really happened to the Shore's neighbours.I was most unsatisfied with the ending.

To be honest, I do not recommend this novel.It was a hard slog through a sea of unpleasant characters.The Saudi setting is very intriguing b ut does not make up for a plot that runs out of steam.I thought the storyline would be a lot more engaging than what it was and I feel that the novel's potential was squandered due to poor characterisation and insufficient resolution of the supposed "mystery" of the unoccupied apartment.

No Freedom of Information
This book isn't about Saudi Arabia; it's about the psychological impact of living in an informational vacuum. Jeddah is a place to experience extraordinary cultural diversity, to delve deeply into Islam, to immerse oneself in history and architecture, to have mindless fun, or to withdraw into the shadows as Frances Shore did in Mantel's novel. But however you as a Western expatriate "see" the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you can be certain that your view is highly superficial, that all of the important decisions that affect your life in The Kingdom are made by people behind closed doors, speaking Arabic, thinking of you as a non-Moslem non-person. You may be useful to them for 1 year or 18, but ultimately you - and all of the other expats who work there from around the world - are expendable. You have no right to know anything, no right to appeal decisions with which you disagree, severely limited freedom of movement within the country, no right to leave the country until the faceless organization that took your passport the moment you arrived chooses to return it to you. You have no control over your own life except in the most superficial sense. Some people cope with these constraints better than others; Frances Shore is one of many who can't cope with them at all, and becomes increasingly terrified and paranoid as she realizes the depth of her ignorance and powerlessness. Those who read the novel in search of a clear resolution to the mystery simply miss the point. Clear resolution presupposes access to information, and power to use it. Western expats in Saudi Arabia have neither.

Don't use this one as a reference to Saudi
If you like extremely ambiguous thrillers with an open ending that you have to go back to the first page to understand, this is fine.

However, if you're looking for information on the "real" Saudi Arabia, it's far from fine.

The claim is that Hilary Mantel lived in Saudi Arabia, but she doesn't write as if she did. I lived there for six years, and her version of expat life is nothing like what I experienced. To begin with, Jeddah is the most Westernized city in Saudi, a really happening place with lots and lots of foreigners, who enjoy life hugely and manage to skate around the restrictions without letting them get in the way. NO ONE I knew just sat in their apartment and moped! There were parties, concerts, art shows, plays, classes, picnics, camping in the desert, and fishing and swimming outings.

No legal alcohol? Home brew. Women can't drive? Tons of taxis, plus a modern bus service.
Shopping? Most of the shop assistants are from Ceylon, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Bangladesh, Phillipines, Taiwan, etc., etc. The idea that they "don't see a woman as a person" is ludicrous! Also, even Saudi men, who traditionally avert their eyes from unrelated women out of politeness, have mostly learned that Western women can and do have minds and opinions, and can be conversed with.

I had a good laugh when someone on the airplane says "Cartographers are redundant. They don't have maps." She wrote that in 1988. However, when my husband and I left in 1985, there WERE maps. We used them to drive around the country.

There are people from all over the world living in the Kingdom, in addition to Americans. Getting to know people from so many countries and cultures was an adventure by itself. My best friends while I was there were Lebanese, Mexican, Canadian and British. My husband and I were invited to visit Saudis, who were invariably as friendly and curious to know about us and our lives as we were about them. Language, by the way, is rarely a problem, as English is used as a sort of lingua franca.

In my opinion, Mantel wanted to write a thriller about a woman in a place where she couldn't depend on anything she used to know, and she chose Saudi Arabia, then cherry-picked the negative elements and exaggerated them.

If you want a more authentic view on Saudi, try "At the Drop of a Veil" by Marianne Alireza. She was probably the first American to marry a Saudi, and while she doesn't avoid the difficulties or the negative things, she also gives a wonderful view of the fascinating culture of the country, and the warmth of the Saudi family she married into.

Lost in Jedda . . .
Mantel's book brings to mind the films "Blow-Up" and "The Conversation," in which evidence of some kind of malfeasance is discovered by an otherwise innocent observer, then takes on a life of its own, while the observer is swept up in a growing tide of paranoia. The narrator in this chilling novel is a woman whose husband has taken a job in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, in the 1980s. Husband and wife are immediately submerged in a culture far different from any they've known, where appearance and reality are seldom clear and fear and rumor dominate their lives.

Trapped in the claustrophobic flat provided by her husband's employer, the narrator comes to suspect that the empty flat above her is not empty at all. Looking for clues to the real nature of its use, she comes to know the wives of two other men who live in the building, who try to dismiss her concerns while reassuring her that the restrictive role of women in this Muslim country is quite reasonable, and repeating to her firmly held beliefs about the West that are wild exaggerations and outright myths. As suspicion points in every direction, the reader begins to doubt the veracity of everyone, including the other western expatriates who make up the central character's social circle.

Finally, the novel is a discourse on the impossibility of discovering the truth, especially when covering it up or ignoring it serves the interests of enough people. Meanwhile, it finds much to say about gender politics, whether under the dictates of Islam or the double standards still to be found in the democratic West. This is a page-turner that is also sharply written. Its characters are vividly created and the dialogue among them is often withering. Not likely to be embraced by Saudi readers, it portrays the Kingdom in ways that are far from flattering. Readers of this book may also be interested in Peter Theroux' memoir, "Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia."

Interesting, although less so when you realize it is only a novel!
I picked up this book, the cover photo on the one I read was very similar to the one of Sally Field on "Not Without My Daughter". About a third of the way through the book I suddenly realized it was a novel -however, it is still a good read.

Frances is a British woman of the world, she has travelled well, lived in Africa for over five years and worked as a cartographer (maps). Her husband is a civil engineer and when work is drying up, he is offered a job in Saudi Arabia.

Frances can't work and needs to follow the laws of Islam, down to dressing modestly, and quickly becomes incredibly bored.Meanwhile, in between reading her crime novels she is sure she can hear sobbing coming from the empty apartment upstairs...

I thought the book was interesting, but would have enjoyed it more is the woman of the book didn't immediatly retreat into herself and become so much like the women she wanted to not be like.A complete drip, who occasionally came out of her shell to act modern and feisty with her questions.Just a bit predictable -having said that the ending was a shocker and I read every page to the end.Well written and interesting. ... Read more

Product Description
One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he? In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop. Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action. Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.
Amazon.com Review
Fetherhoughton, the shabby and provincial village of Hilary Mantel's fifthnovel, Fludd, possesses a charm that is, at best, latent. Thesurrounding moorland is foreboding, the populace is querulous andill-educated, and the presiding priest is an atheist. It's 1956, anddrabness is general to this English backwater. Until, that is, theappearance of a disarming young priest who, apparently, has been dispatchedto wrest Fetherhoughton out of its superstitious stupor. One of the novel'sseveral wonders is that Fludd surpasses all expectations.

Father Angwin, Fetherhoughton's disbelieving priest, has--much to thedispleasure of his superiors--grown comfortable with the entrenched,misapprehending devoutness of his flock. Fludd, who may or may not be thecurate sent to deliver the wayward, exerts an immediate, if unexpected,influence. He intrigues the townspeople, flusters the church's gaggle ofnuns, kindles a welcome self-examination in Father Angwin, and arouses thepassion of the young and yearning Sister Philomena. A charge of possibilitysuddenly animates the village, accompanied by several incidents that seemmidway between coincidence and miracle. Fludd, however, remains beset by aninsistent disillusionment--his clarity, it seems, arcs outward only.

Mantel's cramped and pliant village is a marvel. Fetherhoughton "wrestlesnot against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers,against the rulers of the darkness of this world," insists the dourheadmistress, Mother Perpetua. A local tobacconist, not so trivially, justmight be the devil in human garb. Fludd's gift lies in unearthing all thelovely and fearsome truths buried just beneath the surface. "Thefrightening thing is that life is fair," he observes, "but what weneed... is not justice but mercy." The fruits of this conviction, inFetherhoughton, are rebellion, self-assertion, and even scandal; butMantel's lovely tale suggests that difficult possibility is faircompensation for a sloughed predictability. --Ben Guterson ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Small beginnings
Hilary Mantel has a remarkable sense for the rhythm and shape of words. I imagine that reading anything she wrote would give the sensory pleasures of a unique and artistic voice. This little book does give that but it is not compelling. It promises to be, but then none of the characters seem to develop in a way that does much to progress the story. Later books such as A Place of Greater Safety and Wolf Hall are so stirring and satisfying that one hopes Ms. Mantel is just getting going. Generally I'd say authors create a great first or second book and then lose the touch, but in some cases (such as Philip Roth I think) they may grow even as they age. I can imagine Mantel might be one of those writers.I certainly hope so as I look forward to more from her.

An odd little novel
An odd little novel by the winner of this year's Booker prize. It was one of those books I'd always known about -- who knows why? -- and was determined to read one day. The story centers on a Roman Catholic parish in a provincial English town in the 1950s. Fludd is the name the young curate whose arrival upsets their little world.

Fludd
Do you ever get that feeling when reading a book that you're a part of something special and very important, but you aren't entirely sure that you can grasp the entirety of what the author is presenting to you? That is the feeling I had with Fludd. It didn't seem as though there was much plot to the book until the very end, and then all at once I was finished and was left feeling as though I had read everything closely but had somehow missed The Big Picture.

The book is about religion and faith and the positive and negative effects the two can have on people. But there is so much more to it. Symbolism, I might say, up the wazoo. There are statues and nuns and obscure questions of faith ("If one uses dripping to cook on a Friday during Lent, is that considered eating meat?"). A never-ending carafe of whiskey. A priest who claims disbelief in God to Fludd, but who then says that the devil lives in Netherhoughton. (Can you believe in the devil but not in God? Is that not depressing?) And then, the biggest enigma of them all, there is Fludd.

He arrives and miracles happen. No one can really describe what his face looks like. He appears to finish the food on his plate, but no one ever sees him put food in his mouth. He doesn't seem to do much of anything, but he comes and he goes and things are different. His name, at the least, suggests a great deal about him.

I realize that I haven't so much reviewed this book as made oblique references to how much it has remained in my mind after I finished reading it. Isn't that a stellar review in and of itself? I should think most authors want readers to continue chewing over their stories after reading the last word. I am still chewing (much as Fludd spent much of the book chewing without seeming to eat anything). But I think I know enough about my reaction to recommend the book- it is a misleading slim volume, but it will stay with you after you're done.

If Fludd were a movie....
If Fludd were a movie, it would be 'Michael' (the one with John Travolta). I have not decided for myself whether Fludd is an angel - and I do not have the sense, as another reviewer has, that Fludd is somehow the real alchemist Fludd reincarnated - but there is unquestionably something supernatural about him. There is a Christ-likeness about him, turning water into whiskey, a tiny bit of food into generous portions, giving the (spiritually) dead back their lives, their hopes, their souls. Freeing them. How does the line in 'Michael' go? "It is a hard thing to give a man back his soul." Michael wasn't there to help the old lady....he showed up 6 months in advance, to set up the situation that would bring the real target to him. And Fludd? Who is Fludd there to help? I still don't know. He certainly does seem to help people, though. I quote this paragraph that jumped out at me and made my throat constrict:

"When people complain of their lot, their sneering enemies gloat and tell them, to make them afraid, "Life's not fair." But then again, taking the long view, and barring flood, fire, brain damage, and usual run of bad luck, people do get what they want in life. There is a hidden principle of equity in operation. The frightening thing is that life *is* fair; but what we need, as someone has already observed, is not justice but mercy."

I am haunted by the images in this book. By the people given back their souls. Fludd has done something Michael himself has not: he has served out justice. And mercy.

black as mill smoke...
This is one of the funniest novels I have read in a while - but with black, black humour, which does seem to dilute as the story unfolds.The first half is marvellous as Mantel cuttingly describes the primitivevillage. Fludd remains enigmatic but perhaps that is the point and I didn't think deeper about the alchemy implied. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (11)

Deserves zero stars......simply awful
I suffered through this book for a book club, otherwise I would have never made it past the first chapter. I was hopeful the book would get better since it had 4.5 stars on this site and came highly recommended by a member of my book club. Unfortunately, it continued to disappoint up until the final chapter. Don't waste your time or money!

Why do reviewers find the book funny?
This is a novel about female cruelty, and I can see why Margaret Atwood praised it so highly (it came out around the time of The Robber Bride, which centres on a hateful character).
Like other readers, I have a thousand unanswered questions and would love to ask Mantel what she intended.
But basically, I see it as a portrait of female evil. It was fascinating and I read it in one go and am now eager to read much, much more Mantal.
But it's not amusing or witty or satiric, it draws blood on every page. So be prepared.

Experiencing love and other disasters
Hilary Mantel's "An Experiment in Love" is a strange novel. Not that it is bad - it is just strange. It is about a group of girls who move to London in the late 1960s to go to the university. It is also about the changing times, and what it brings to their lives. Narrated by the protagonist, Carmel McBain, this is a story of reminiscences, of remembrance things past, in a Proustian way.

Mantel bends past and present in her narrative tying both ends of Carmel's life. The common figure is her friend, Karina. Not they are really friends, it is that their lives are linked, no matter how much the narrator didn't wanted it to be. There is a sense of guilty surrounding her. Her life has always been better than Karina's, who still manages to get into the same university and follow Carmel from their small country town to the big city. Karina is not only Carmel's nemesis, but somehow, her doppelganger.

In her precise prose, Mantel details how lives come together with ties stronger than ourselves. Carmel may not want Karina stealing her life, nevertheless, the narrator can't help it. Throughout the narrative, we wonder what makes good people be good. Or, even more, what is a good person? How can it be defined? And, therefore, what is a bad person? Is there a reason to be good or bad? "An Experiment in Love" is not a book to bring answers, but to raise interesting questions.

"Carpe diem is an empty sentiment, now that we all live so long."


Mantel's novel of 1960s London fairly aches with the awakening of young womanhood confronted with the incipient sexual revolution. The security of the past rejected for the prospects of a future filled with sexual freedom, the pill and control over one's body, the implications are almost staggering. For Carmel McBain, product of a strict Catholic school upbringing, the choices are daunting. Constraint built into her psyche, she attempts to balance the lessons of a painful childhood with a new identity that affords a wider view of the world at large. In contrast to her unrestricted appreciation of life's potential, albeit within monetary and class limits, Carmel's body pays the price of her family's financial situation. At no time does she enjoy the excesses of abundance, either in material goods or the amount of food she is forced to subsist on. It becomes a forced march, this rigorous schooling at Towbridge Hall, denying herself in order to achieve her goals. Barely aware of her descent, Carmel slips into the nether world of anorexia, self-denial a common condition.

Rooming with a girl who is her polar opposite, Carmel views Julianne Lipcott as the embodiment of worldliness, sporting a cavalier attitude that serves her well, Julianne afforded the luxury of watching others suffer while she looks on. The girls live out their tribulations under Julianne's observant eye, relieving her of the necessity of personal experience. Although the two girls have attended Holy Redeemer School together, a daunting feat for Carmel's elderly, bitter parents, it is the third person in this unholy trilogy that haunts Carmel's emotional development. Karina has been a burden since their earliest years, a plump, unattractive, gluttonous girl much favored by Carmel's mother. A hulking dark shadow at her side, Karina lumbers along, forever in Carmel's shadow, symbolically growing larger as Carmel literally disappears. Confronted by the ease of sexual relations and the burdens entailed, Carmel fails to achieve the abundant freedom of her roommate, emotionally vulnerable to the vagaries of first love, driven to excel while plagued with self-doubt.

Karina remains the embodiment of a murky, unhappy past, a penurious childhood riddled with Catholic guilt, a quest to find a more nurturing niche in the world and a reminder of a tragedy that suddenly illuminates one girl's ignominious deed at the cost of another. As Mantel mines the deep contradictions of Carmel's past, the protagonist's spirit fairly glows in spite of her slight frame, her perceptions of reality honed by experience and a natural intuition for honesty. Like a pale moon, Julia recedes as Carmel's tale unfolds, the burdensome visage of Karina expiated by unexpected circumstances. The prose reveals all, the terrible tensions of the sexual revolution, an awakening of female consciousness and the seductive pull of the more cautious past: "The little women inside were looking out through our eyes and waving to the world." Luan Gaines/2007.

--Growing up in 1960's England--
I read AN EXPERIMENT IN LOVE because I had read FLUDD by this author and thought that it was an amazing and interesting story. Also, the reviews are quite good.

This is a very original story that makes you think and remember your own childhood. Carmel McBain, the main character is the only child of working class parents who want the best for her. Unfortunately, her mother is overbearing and almost kills the spirit and life of her daughter. Carmel is constantly told what her parents have given up for her and what their expectations are.Her life, rigidly controlled by her mother, includes the nagging pressure to always be among the top of her class. Carmel would like to participate in helping around the house and other activities, but the constraint that her mother uses won't allow it.Carmel is to spend all of her time studying so that she can be accepted in the best schools

Mrs. McBain unfairly compares Carmel to Karina, a girl from the neighborhood and Carmel's schoolmate. Karina is the daughter of immigrants and has a lot of duties and responsibilities at home. The two girls don't really like each other, but are thrown together by their mothers. Karina knows what to say to parents and teachers, but to Carmel she is vicious and nasty. She's a person who we've all met somewhere in our lives, who tell those in authority exactly what they want to hear and then makes snide remarks to their peers.

Carmel makes other friends, but Karina is always lurking in the background of her life. Unfortunately, she's saddled with Karina for most of her school years. Carmel suffers more than her share of the agonies of growing up.Eventually, something has to give and it does with a sad price.

It's one of those books that the reader gets the idea about what's going on, but nothing is ever completely explained. I have a thousand questions that I'd like to ask the author.


... Read more

Product Description
In the wake of Hilary Mantel's captivating memoir, 'Giving Up the Ghost', this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.This sharp, funny collection of stories drawn from life begins in the 1950s in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.' For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.In 'King Billy is a Gentleman', the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. 'Curved Is the Line of Beauty' is a story of friendship, faith and a near-disaster in a scrap-yard. The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In 'Third Floor Rising', she watches, dazzled, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity.With a deceptively light touch, Mantel locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (26)

Beyond great
Wow. Does anyone else write as well as Hilary Mantel? This book has the creepy power to change the way you look at the world and the half-world. Her ghosts are so evil and banal and freshly drawn, it's as if she has reinvented the afterlife. Amazing book.

Character Study + Boring People = Tedious Mix
Beyond Black is a complete success... but that doesn't mean every, or even most readers will find the book better than merely average. Personally, I fall in the category of "most." I liked the novel, I admired the writing, but I never felt engaged.

Remember back, long ago, when in grade school we'd watch film strips? I remember feeling disappointment when the teacher would roll out the film strip machine instead of the movie projector. Why? The moving pictures, not the series of still lifes, I found far more enjoying. It felt like more of a story watching a film about the life of the tadpole, rather than a series of static images. A film strip I'd scan, a movie I'd see. Big difference.

Reading Mantel's Beyond Black felt like film strip. The main characters were interesting, but never fully realized. Much of the novel seemed like a series of the same scenes told in slightly different ways. Mantel seemed more interested in showing her readers a blow by blow synopsis of what it means to be a psychic, with all of its trials and tribulations, rather than focus on an actual plot.

More character study than page turner. Really, not a lot happens. The ghosts are tiresome, the bitchiness is tiresome, the gossip is tiring, the codependency is tiring, the childhood tragedy is tiring, its all tiring because Mantel is so tightly focused on such a narrow series of observations. It all felt just so claustrophobic.

This may have been Mantel's intent, and if so, like I said, the book is a complete success. Doubtless there are those who are just so bleeding interested in psychics that a novel that focuses on the tedium and minutia of the lifestyle is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Not me.

I want my psychics to actually DO something. This character study simply isn't an examination of interesting people, it's an examination of boring people having boring conversations about topics that might have been controversial back in the 80s on Donahue.

I'll probably try Wolf Hall, eventually. Maybe her memoir. I doubt I'll take a closer look at anything else without a decided improvement.

What gets this novel a third star is the writing prowess. There's no doubt Mantel can write -- it's just, she needs to write something interesting.

Why do I have you for my assistant, instead of somebody nice?
The layers of Alison's life being stripped away backwards as the book progresses wasn't a new idea, but was done very well here. The sense that her journey to clear away the bad spirits around her had to start with going into all of the ugliness of her childhood and then going out and doing good with her gift, not a new idea either. But the writing was crisp and had the sort of humor that engages me - the sort of lines that have me laughing after absorbing them. The author's characters are so clear and distinct - even the plainest of them, such as Colette or Gavin are painted to the fullness of their lack of personalities. Alison: "Children can drown in two inches of water." Colette: "Aren't they ingenious?" The roles of the spirits - they barbing and back & forth between Alison & Colette - well-crafted & compelling.

Savage beauty
This book is a beautifully crafted view into a place that few of us may ever choose to go. At least, I hope so for our sakes. It begins with a slow and friendly pace, touring us through its not always pleasant characters' lives. By the time it ends, I felt I had a stake in what happened and was genuinely concerned with whether Allison survived her traumatic visitations.

The best I can say is that it felt utterly true to me, which is saying a good deal. It is not, however, for the casual reader looking for a fun airplane read. I don't think that would be satisfying. The book demands time be spent with it, and I felt the time was well worth it, if at times a bit grueling.

Beyond Ennui
I wanted to like the book as it had a fascinating cover (the hardbound edition) and it seemed like an entoxicating plot. However, it was such work to finish the first three chapters that I started another book, which lead to five new ones.For a first-time Mantel read, I was underwhelmed at the prose in the book. It just didn't pull me in and the novel just seemed to drag.I tried to get through it again and still couldn't make it to the halfway point, so I just let it go. I didn't care about the characters and decided that when you get almost halfway and find yourself working to read a novel for pleasure, it's best to move on and find something you enjoy. Truly, a boring read... ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (5)

"Anger and fear, she thought. Fight and flight."

Mantel's unusual tale is intriguing, a contrast between the seemingly normal lives of neighbors on a quiet street, most unaware that an odd mother and daughter exist in quite another world, one where spirits inhabit the rooms as well as the residents. In 1970ss England, Evelyn Axon and her mentally-challenged daughter, Muriel, are an unusual pair. A medium, the widowed Evelyn is haunted by the spirits she calls upon for clients, her rambling, decaying house filled with the uninvited. The sly, observant Muriel, no longer a child, takes great pains to outwit Evelyn, who berates her daughter cruelly and often. Not surprising that the ungainly, uncommunicative Muriel is the predictable product of her bizarre environment. The hammering of various social welfare workers is met with silence from within, the Axon's recoiling from unwanted intrusion.

Isabel Field, the current social worker assigned the Axon's, is troubled by her inability to help this pair, judging her own efforts inadequate. But Isabel gets distracted by a short affair with married schoolteacher Colin Sidney, whose unhappy wife, Sylvia, can barely control the three children who fill her days with chaos, let alone track the movements of a boring husband. In a vague connection, Colin's unmarried sister, Florence, lives next door to Evelyn and Muriel, her tentative overtures of friendship quickly rebuffed. Coping with the disappointments of an unhappy marriage and the scant rewards of an illicit relationship, Isabel and the Sidney provide the face of everyday life as most of us experience it, Muriel and Evelyn the unpredictable, both victims and conspirators in a bureaucratic social network meant to help those in need.

Mantel explores both the light and the dark side of human existence, the mental aberration bred of dysfunction, the accidental exposure of a nightmare in the midst of a quiet neighborhood, where incipient tragedy festers in dark corners and the scent of decay is pervasive. The blundering Colin Sidney, the well-meaning Isabel and the helpful neighbor, Florence, are caught up in a contretemps with unforeseeable consequences as the tortured daughter of an unstable woman finds herself at the mercy of an unfamiliar world, institutionalized by a system that swallows the needy whole. Out of sight, out of mind, or is she? Luan Gaines/2010.

A Brilliantly Creepy Book
Don't be misled by the title: Every Day Is Mother's Day isn't an Erma Bombek type look at motherhood or a feminist polemic--it's the best "ghost story" I've ever read. It's sad, funny, macabre, and disturbing. I've read only one other book (Fludd) by this author so far, but she's already near the top of my list of favorite writers--maybe she'll be on yours, too.

Evil Among US
Hilary Mantel is one of a kind.She is inconcerned with surfaces anddeals with the subconscious activity of the forces of Good and Evil, bothof our own devising and of other realms of authority entirely.EVERY DAYIS MOTHER'S DAY is a story of incremental evil and madness loosed on aselectively perceivingworld, the activity of the truly wicked beingobscured by the preconceptions and the predilections of those who, sidelongand reluctant, observe it.One little horror engenders another, eachlarger than the last, until chaos is unleashed and, still, unappreciatedfor what it is, is embraced by those who are certain to become its nextvictims.This is a novel of real terror, and part of the horror is that itwill make you laugh.

Very Disappointing!
This is not the worst book I've ever read, but it is very close!It had potential to be a good read, but lacked in many key areas.The characters were fairly interesting and decently developed individually, but theoutcome of all their interaction was not develped nearly enough.Theentanglment of the characters had good plot potential, but ended up beingVERY anticlimactic.I felt like the book was unfinished and probablyneeded at least another hundred pages or so to round out the characters andtheir situations.It even felt as if it was published exactly as the firstdraft was written, without any content editing, rewriting or further plotdevelopment.Every Day is Mother's Day is a book that had promise, butfell quite short of it's potential.

A creepily satisfying read
People who have enjoyed Mantel's more gentle, humane novels like Experiment in Love or Change Of Climate might be surprised by the black comedy of this one. But I became weirdly fascinated in the characters, theoccasionally chilling plot, the astringent prose and the biting humor fromthe outset. Immediately after I finished this book, I plunged into itssequel, Vacant Posession. But I don't recommend reading them when you'rehome alone at night.Mantel's decription of madness is so convincing, Ibriefly feared for my own sanity for a minute or two while reading it. ... Read more

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Unfortunately, O'Brien's height attracts more attention than he might like:John Hunter, a surgeon, becomes fascinated with the giant and obsessed withthe possibility of dissecting him after he's dead. Thus Mantel sets up thecentral conflict of her novel: Hunter's thirst for knowledge and fameversus O'Brien's conviction that without his body his soul cannot go toheaven. In the mean streets of 18th-century London, the author explores thedivision of soul and body, imagination and rationalism, as she juxtaposesthe two men's lives. In this collision of cultures and points of view, sheoffers no easy answers, but instead turns a disturbing spotlight onquestions that continue to resonate to the present day. --Alix Wilber ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Wonderful little novel
I loved this book, but then I love Hilary Mantel's writing. Some people find her dialog hard to follow but I don't seem to have that problem - maybe I get so buried in them that the conversation works for me. This one had me missing my subway stop. The Giant O'Brien is wonderful both with her depictions of 18th century Ireland and England and her characters, even the ruthless ones. I think she made John Hunter out to be a little too evil maybe - it was interesting to read about the real Dr. Hunter. He is described in biographical sketches as being very humane and kind although he did have a temper and it is a fact that he violated O'Brien's (Byrne's) dying wish to be buried at sea. Mantel also makes him out to be somebody who has wonderful manners, playing at this very well to get what he wants although the Giant isn't fooled. If you google Charles O'Brien and John Hunter you can find a photo of the interior of the Hunter museum in London with the Giant's skeleton on view. You can also find a drawing of the real O'Brien standing between the Knife (Knipe) brothers, the tallest identical twins ever known. The fourth giant in the book is also based on a real person, Patrick O'Brien. There is also an ongoing battle by severly people who want the Hunter museum to make a plaster cast of the skeleton and honor O'Brien's wishes finally and have hin buried at sea. Don't know if any of the other characters are historical figures but they were compelling nonetheless.

The Giant,Obrien
In short, O'brien, the novel, deals with a fascinating and unusual. It's stylishly, intelligently, and poetically written. A tribute to Swift and Joyce and their voices, but
the overridingauthor is definitely Mantel. Wonderful read.

Brilliant and subtle themes woven into a tale of woe
There is much food for thought in this odd yet entertaining dark short book. Hilary Mantel tells the story of Charles O'Brien, an Irish giant, who comes to London to make a living as a 'freak' or sideshow exhibit. He is accompanied by crude Irish ruffians and a villainous agent, Joe Vance. The story of the Irish giant runs parallel to the story of the Scottish surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter.

The novel can be interpreted in many ways, attesting to the superb talent of Hilary Mantel. The lives of Giant Charles O'Brien and Scottish surgeon John Hunter have some striking similarities. Whereas O'Brien sees the vast poverty, social deterioration and economic oppression of the Irish people by the English; John Hunter is no stranger to tragedy as the youngest of 12 children he is always fed last and eventually thrives as a wild child in the Scottish countryside. Here he learns from nature but also is devoid of human sentiment and compassion. He watches as almost all of his siblings die until he, his older brother, and older sister are all that remain. He has seen much death and is well acquainted with death. The giant begins to grow signaling his death while John Hunter begins to deteriorate from a sexually transmitted disease that infected him accidentally when he was trying to infect a homeless man so that Hunter could watch the natural progression of the disease in this homeless fellow. John Hunter desires the skeleton of the giant and pursues him. John Hunter buys corpses. The chapter where he lectures grave robbers on how to rob a grave is creepy and interesting. Hunter now tracks the giant who believes that his body must remain intact if he expects to go to heaven on judgment day. This is the basic armature of the book, but it really is much more than just this.

First, Mantel develops a clever comparison to the life of Jesus in her novel. O'Brien gathers disciples around him, many of whom are scruffy and criminal. Like Jesus, he approaches the downtrodden and asks them to join him. In Ireland he rocks a starving boy until his last breath while telling his mother that the boy is the inheritor of kings and will sit on a throne. After the boy's death, he asks the starving woman to join his group on the way to London. Later his group has their own Mary Magdalene in the person of Bitch Mary, the twelve year old prostitute. He provides fables and tales to entertain and instruct his wayward disciples, inflicted with naive youth, mental retardation, and criminal intent. As Jesus enters Jerusalem to preach his message and then to die, so too does Charles O'Brien enter London to tell stories, make a living as a sideshow freak, and eventually to die. Like Jesus, the disciples disappoint and eventually betray him, willing to sale his bones for cash even though they know the giant feared this would mean he can't go to heaven on judgment day.

The fables told by the giant are odd and haunting and are wonderfully integrated into the short novel. One is a story of a beautiful young mother who nurses a demon baby and loses her own healthy human baby; another is an odd tale of Snow White sleeping with the 7 dwarves until they are killed by suspicious villagers; a third is the tale of pig faced girl who isolates herself from cruel human society the older she becomes. They all end badly, they all emphasize either exploitation of the innocent or man's inhumanity to man.

Much of the novel revolves around human cruelty to other humans. This novel perfectly exemplifies the concept that man is prey to man. There is structural exploitation, which is seen in the relationship of Ireland to England and the vast amount of capital punishment that occurs to the Irish poor for stealing food for their starving children and other 'crimes' that the socially and economically oppressed commit in order to survive. One interesting passage is a list of all the young men and women that the giant knows who were hung by the English for a vast range of petty offenses. Irish women are called `bitch' by the English. Thus the young 12 year old prostitute, Mary, becomes known as Bitch Mary. Thus vast structural oppression occurs in this novel. However, the squalor of everyday oppression of master to servant; landlord to renter; criminal to victim; and pimp to prostitute is evident throughout this dark little novel.

Underneath all the social commentary, the poverty, and man's inhumanity to man is a subtle and well developed theme. For Charles O'Brien is a man who spins myth. He is almost a walking myth himself. He instructs with tales of woe and calamity yet underneath the woe is a spirit of generosity and compassion and a belief in the power of the well-told tale. O'Brien is contrasted with John Hunter, a man who is obsessed with heartless inquiry. He buys corpses and studies anatomy endlessly. Yet his aim in not for the betterment of the human condition, but primarily for his own unquenched desire for knowledge. He may practice surgery but primarily for his own intellectual gratification rather than for the relief of suffering. So, at first sight, it appears that this is a novel about myth versus science; fable versus inquiry; sentiment versus objectivity; emotion versus reason.It is to Hilary Mantel's credit that the novel is not that obvious. For in the end, the squalor and depravity of the human condition bring down both Charles O'Brien and John Hunter. Both are betrayed by trusted servants; both are betrayed by their own bodies; both are eventually betrayed by the limitations of human existence. It is this haunting bleak reality that is Mantel's message. For in the end the human capacity for greed and evil drowns both myth making and science making.

Nothing Further To Add...
I thoroughly enjoyed THE GIANT, O'BRIEN and just wanted to put in a positive review because Hilary Mantel always provides a good read.If one is looking for something out of the ordinary, that has some depth, and that will stay in your head for a week or so afterward, you can't go wrong Mantel.

This book was pretty good, I enjoyed it
This book was pretty good. I like how the surgeon gets different body parts of people to study them. The surgeon then gets interested in the giant. Sometimes it gets confusing because sometimes I do not no who is speaking. If you were interested in a almost secretive book with cultures from England, and that takes place in London, then this book is for you! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

It takes a couple of reads to get it
I first read Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall about a year ago.At the time I found it interesting and frequently confusing.After a couple of hundred pages I got into the rhythm of her idiosyncratic writing style.She leaves out convenient verbal guideposts like 'he said' 'she said' but simply writes the conversations and comments often without identifying the speaker.This muted my enjoyment of a fascinating tale.

Upon second reading I found myself enjoying myself hugely.I fell into Mantel's clipped style with ease and the story flowed without confusion and much enlightenment.Her characters are fully fleshed, living, breathing creatures that pop back to life after hundreds of years.My impressions of Cardinal Wolsey, King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and, most of all, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell have been forever altered.

Mantel is not sympathetic to religious doctrine, especially when it is oppressive and innocent people are burned at the stake or disemboweled simply because they disagree with some smug, narrow-minded religious zealot like Thomas More or Stephen Gardiner.

I look forward to Mantel's sequel to this wonderful novel that brings the Tudor age back to life as if it happened yesterday.
I intend to read Wolf Hall again when the snow flies in bleak midwinter.

Highly recommended for those with the patience to read it twice before experiencing the full impact of Mantel's fine gifts.

A good book, but not a must
If you want to read for pleasure and inspiration, you do not need to select a book that is over 650 pages long. To an ordinary reader it seems as if there is some sort of competition amongst writers and publishers to have their books longer and longer. There are some long books that I found difficult to put down, but I do not think that Hilary Mantel's book needed to have been so long. In fact, for me, it would have been more appealing if it had been shorter.

As I started reading the book it was gripping and I could see it was going to be difficult not to read it. However, the initial attraction fizzled out and the only way to finish the book, and then go on to other better reading, was to skip sentences and paragraphs. One problem I found was that there was so much detail that the thrust of the main story was sometimes forgotten.

The other reason why the book was not so appealing was that there were some gaps. For instance, the reader would have liked to have understood how Cromwell managed to get to the very powerful position that he did, when initially he was potentially out of favour as he supported Cardinal Wolsey. Another example is that there ought to have beena little more about the significance of Wolfe Hall and why the ending of the book is regarded by many as being what made the book so great. It was assuming more knowledge about the historical background than many readers would have.

One must, however, comment of the amount of research Hilary mantel must have done to produce the detail in the book, and her ability to write so much, so well.
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Product Description
Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust & need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor.Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: No character in the canon has been writ larger than Henry VIII, but that didn't stop Hilary Mantel. She strides through centuries, past acres of novels, histories, biographies, and plays--even past Henry himself--confident in the knowledge that to recast history's most mercurial sovereign, it's not the King she needs to see, but one of the King's most mysterious agents. Enter Thomas Cromwell, a self-made man and remarkable polymath who ascends to the King's right hand. Rigorously pragmatic and forward-thinking, Cromwell has little interest in what motivates his Majesty, and although he makes way for Henry's marriage to the infamous Anne Boleyn, it's the future of a free England that he honors above all else and hopes to secure. Mantel plots with a sleight of hand, making full use of her masterful grasp on the facts without weighing down her prose. The opening cast of characters and family trees may give initial pause to some readers, but persevere: the witty, whip-smart lines volleying the action forward may convince you a short stay in the Tower of London might not be so bad... provided you could bring a copy of Wolf Hall along. --Anne Bartholomew ... Read more

Customer Reviews (329)

Mantel's Wolf Hall
It is hard to believe that a Human Being can write so splendid story about the Tudors and its world

Wolf Hall
This book Wolf Hall has not arrived. All communication with seller is totally frustrating. Book was ordered n Sept.23.
What do I do?
Seller is sbd- Totally not reliable!!!
The I hate it star is for the service ,not the novel

Ms. Mantel, you lost me at "he"
Sorry, Ms. Mantel, but you lost me at "he".Sentences like "Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen" would have been easier for me to understand if you'd told me this was Thomas Cromwell, your protagonist.I got so twisted by the overuse of this pronoun, I had to stop reading.Picking up the audio version didn't make it any easier.I could keep the female straight - weren't that many - but the men ... not a one.

Back to basics for me.Thankfully, "The Brothers Karamazov" was next on my list.Now THAT one I could understand!

could have been but NOT
I love Tudor history and fiction so was excited about this one. BUT, agree with other reviewers that her use of pronouns was confusing. You were never sure what Cromwell was thinking or feeling. TOO LONG. Interesting to learn about Cromwell's family life but his cruelty was downplayed and of course we never get to see his downfall. I skimmed quite a bit just to see what else happened, but could not stay with it. Not a keeper - it goes to a used book store. Disappointing.

A new take on Tudor history
When I ordered Wolf Hall, I was thinking:Ho, hum, another version of the Six Wives of Henry VIII.But the point of view of the author and the dramatic selection of historical scenes and intimate conversations made me go, wow!It was brilliantly written, historically accurate and a real page turner. ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Wolf Hall, a Change of Climate, Every Day Is Mother's Day, Beyond Black, Vacant Possession, Fludd, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Wolf Hall (2009) is a novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate. It won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Set in the 1520s and 1530s, the novel is about the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the Tudor court of King Henry VIII. Born to a lower-class family of no position or name, Cromwell first became the right-hand of Cardinal Wolsey, and then, after Wolsey's fall from grace, the chief minister to Henry VIII. In that role, he oversaw the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn. He was widely hated in his lifetime, and historical and literary accounts in the subsequent centuries have not been kind to Cromwell; in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, for example, he is portrayed as the calculating, unprincipled opposite of Thomas More's honour and rectitude. Mantel's novel offers a corrective to that impression, an intimate and more rounded portrait of Cromwell and the political machinations of Henry's court. Mantel spent five years researching and writing the book, and the trickiest part, she said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, was trying to match her version to the historical record. To avoid contradicting history, she created a card catalogue, organized alphabetically by character, with each card containing notes showing where a particular historical figure was on relevant dates. "You really need to know, where is the Duke of Suffolk at the moment? You can't have him in London if he's supposed to be somewhere else," she exp...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=22825033 ... Read more