Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
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Hilary Mantel
Penguin 1995
This book came as a real relief after one or two I had to slog through and a couple more I started but, to quote Morrissey, couldn’t finish. At last here was a novel with a gripping story and interesting characters, which left me with something to think about. It tells the story of the marriage of Anna and Ralph Eldred, largely through the tragic events of their time working for a mission in Africa in the fifties, and their more tranquil but nevertheless precarious existence in Norfolk in 1980. The story itself is engrossing, and beautifully told, but Mantel unobtrusively builds in a discussion of “big” themes - in particular the way small events can, ultimately, for good or ill, change the course of a life. She is also very good at conjuring up a sense of place; this is the first novel I can remember where North Walsham is mentioned, and her description of a place where there is “nothing doing … nothing doing in a little market town on a Sunday afternoon” and Boots has “an alluring display of hot water bottles” is just right. Mantel’s depiction of local oddness, including a woman who knitted trousers for her son, is also spot on; I actually picked this up in a charity shop in North Walsham staffed by eccentric Norfolk old ladies who could have stepped out of this novel. The things that didn’t convince were the at times over literary dialogue, and the rather unrealistic smallholder and her daughter. Otherwise this is a fine novel.
20th August 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Mantel
See also: Beyond Black ; Giving Up The Ghost ; Wolf Hall
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