September 23, 2022
My Hilary Mantel
I arrived at Hilary Mantel during what turned out to be the most impressionable and formative parts of my reading life (so far!), during the years after my undergraduate degree when I was living abroad, first in England and then in Japan where my favourite occupation was buying Penguin paperbacks from Wantage Books in Kobe. This was the period where I first started reading favourites like Margaret Drabble, and Joan Didion, and yes, Hilary Mantel, whose own expatriate novels, EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET and A CHANGE OF CLIMATE inspired the novel I’d write for my Masters thesis a few years later. It was her dark comic novels I loved best though, EVERY DAY IS MOTHER’S DAY and it’s sequel VACANT POSSESSION are horrifying and hilarious (and based on Mantel’s experience as a social worker; I’d also worked for social services while I lived in England and deeply recognized the disturbing realism in these works). You will notice I don’t have her historical works on my shelf—I read WOLF HALL, but (forgive me!) it just didn’t do it for me, which was FINE, because it certainly had enough other readers to go around. I think what I love about Mantel is how wide ranging were her passions and preoccupations over the years, which means there’s a Mantel shelf for every kind of reader and I am so grateful this is mine.
I’ve read many of her earlier books and loved them. Beyond Black. Giving up the Ghost. I found Wolf Hall a bit hard to find my way into (the pronouns were confusing at first. Who was this “he”? Was he…any number of the male characters introduced thus far?) but then I was hooked and I read all 3 of that group with such interest and attention. I mean, I knew how the story would end. But somehow she made it so human, brought the characters down to the level of basic decency or lack thereof. Oh, and could she ever write. A beautiful stylist, the elegant sentences unspooling like the finest silk.
My Mantel shelf is stocked with the Wolf Hall series. I read the first one in January 2021, and I was so taken with it. Walking around the house telling my family, “oh you wouldn’t believe what Thomas Cromwell just did”… Then I read the second one this January, and already looking forward to reading the last instalment in the trilogy this January. Something about her beautiful writing just helps me get through the dark winter months. I am glad to know there are many more Mantel books for me to pick up in the future.
Oh, I love that idea so much!! Thomas Cromwell making trouble. I also love that Mantel made so many readers passionate and excited about long, dense novels with such incredible language. Makes me like the world more…