It's also the only Hilary Mantel I've read, though I'm aware of her stature as a historical novelist, and I've listened to her on the radio and read articles by her in newspapers.

This book is largely a childhood memoir. As you can imagine Hilary was a bright and precocious child, she amuses herself with tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the round table and desires the life of the knight errant but alas at the age of four she is disappointed to find that she doesn't turn into a boy! There is some upheaval in her family which she bravely takes on the chin. She then details her days at a convent secondary school, her time at university and her struggle against some of her chauvinistic lecturers at Sheffield University~ I cannot see that being a bigger person makes Hilary any less attractive as a person she is not! All those people who use various euphemisms for being overweight should just try describing what is beautiful about a person, there is always plenty and as for Hilary, they could start with her brilliant mind and wit. It is finished” correlates with the completion of the work of Christ in salvation and also the signs around his death like the earthquake and the veil being torn in two. My heart went out to Hilary, as the medication made her gain weight and people started to be judgemental I could have cried, I almost shouted out YES when she said that people say to her 'you are looking well' oh my, I know that one, I think I shall be looking well in my coffin. I learn to walk in the house, but don’t remember that. Outside the house, you turn left: I don’t know it’s left. Moving towards the next-door house: from my grandmother (56 Bankbottom Hadfield Nr Manchester) to her elder sister, at No. 58. Embedded in the stonework on the left of my grandmother’s door is a rusty iron ring. I always slip my finger into it, though I should not. Grandad says it is where they tied the monkey up, but I don’t think they really ever had one; all the same, he lurks in my mind, a small grey monkey with piteous eyes and a long active tail.

give up the ˈghost

Alex Clark reports in his interview with Hilary Mantel: In a speech in 2013, Mantel referred to Kate Middleton, by then the Duchess of Cambridge, as “a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung”; a woman whose primary purpose was to provide the heir apparent with heirs of his own. Both Ed Miliband and David Cameron voiced their disapproval but, “if anything,” she says now, “I think my plea was to consider, these are human beings. I’m on her side, not one of her persecutors.” With the royal family yet again in crisis, she connects the current obsession with royal bodies to the themes she’s probing in The Mirror & the Light: “What is a king? Is he a sort of super-being? Or is he a kind of beast? Does he even rise to the status of human? And all this is explored through Henry’s body. So it’s very much a theme I’ve been conscious of continually. And, of course, it was completely misunderstood by numbskulls.”The memoir is no different. She exudates her preposterous imagination on everything she recounts:

Many years later, when there was a suspicion about my heart, I was sent to hospital for an echocardiogram. A woman rolled me with a big roller, as if she were flattening me to take spin. I heard the same sound, the vast, pulsing, universal roar: my own blood in my own veins. But for a time I didn’t know whether that sound came from inside me, or from the depth of the machines by my bed. resting if that is the word─in full armor and on a bed of pebbles: his shoulder muscles twitching, perhaps, his legs flexing, every year as we reach the Feast of All Souls and the dead prepare to walk. This memoir of a girls life from the fifties to the present day is a really great read and I would recommend it to all women not just from that time but to younger women too. It is informative, funny, and it just might make them a little more tolerant of other females, as they should be.Much else in this novel fascinated me. Her awareness is not like any other I have shared, and share it I did. To read this memoir is to be inside her mind and way of thinking. Hilary Mantel is a feminist gone Goth. And not in the least embarrassed by it. Like Christopher Hitchens, she does not hesitate in poking the sleeping bear. Remember he wanted to title his book about Mother Theresa Sacred Cow but instead it ended up being The Missionary Position-Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice. Like Christ, let us give our lives, our souls, willingly unto the God who will translate us into an eternal life no worldly power can kill, giving us victory now and later over the power of Death. I also feel like Mantel at some moments was trying to play with humour, especially dark humour, but it fell flat for me most of the time. After a while I am walking about in the room again. My resolve to die completely alone has faltered. I suppose it will take an hour or so, or I might live till evening. My head is still hanging. What’s the matter? I am asked. I don’t feel I can say. My original intention was not to raise the alarm; also, I feel there is shame in such a death. I would rather just fall over, and that’s about it. I feel queasy now. Som

Firstly, it is wonderfully written. Although Mantel is now a well known prize winning author, this is in fact the only thing I've ever read by her. Her use of language, the rhythm of her writing and her style is masterful. There is a lot for anyone interested in the craft of writing to admire. Secondly, her insight into her life and the things she has gone through is brilliantly described. Thirdly, although it is not a happy book, it is not without humour, mostly through the way she writes than humorous episodes themselves. Occasional sentences or even half sentences are funny. Mantel focuses a lot on the idea of owning up and writing your narrative in the way you want, and I have the utmost respect for it. I, however, have very little interest in writers as public figures, and I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that just because a famous writer wrote a memoir, I have to pretend to be interested in the subject matter of it, when I in fact find it quite boring.Hilary Mantel ist eine der wohl einflussreichsten Schriftstellerinnen unserer Zeit. Als einzige Frau hat sie mit ihren bisher erschienenen Romanen um Thomas Cromwell, “Wolf Hall” (Wölfe) und “Bring up the Bodies” (Falken) den Man Booker Prize gewonnen.