America for Beginners
Leah Franqui, 2018
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062668752
Summary
A funny, poignant, and insightful debut novel that explores the complexities of family, immigration, prejudice, and the American Dream through meaningful and unlikely friendships forged in unusual circumstances.
Pival Sengupta has done something she never expected: she has booked a trip with the First Class India USA Destination Vacation Tour Company.
But unlike other upper-class Indians on a foreign holiday, the recently widowed Pival is not interested in sightseeing. She is traveling thousands of miles from Kolkota to New York on a cross-country journey to California, where she hopes to uncover the truth about her beloved son, Rahi.
A year ago Rahi devastated his very traditional parents when he told them he was gay. Then, Pival’s husband, Ram, told her that their son had died suddenly—heartbreaking news she still refuses to accept.
Now, with Ram gone, she is going to America to find Rahi, alive and whole or dead and gone, and come to terms with her own life.
Arriving in New York, the tour proves to be more complicated than anticipated. Planned by the company’s indefatigable owner, Ronnie Munshi—a hard-working immigrant and entrepreneur hungry for his own taste of the American dream—it is a work of haphazard improvisation.
Pavil’s guide is the company’s new hire, the guileless and wonderfully resourceful Satya, who has been in America for one year—and has never actually left the five boroughs.
For modesty’s sake Pival and Satya will be accompanied by Rebecca Elliot, an aspiring young actress. Eager for a paying gig, she’s along for the ride, because how hard can a two-week "working" vacation traveling across America be?
Slowly making her way from coast to coast with her unlikely companions, Pival finds that her understanding of her son—and her hopes of a reunion with him—are challenged by her growing knowledge of his adoptive country.
As the bonds between this odd trio deepens, Pival, Satya, and Rebecca learn to see America—and themselves—in different and profound new ways.
A bittersweet and bighearted tale of forgiveness, hope, and acceptance, America for Beginners illuminates the unexpected enchantments life can hold, and reminds us that our most precious connections aren’t always the ones we seek. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Mumbai, India
Leah Franqui is a graduate of Yale University and received an MFA at NYU-Tisch. She is a playwright and the recipient of the 2013 Goldberg Playwriting Award, and also wrote a web series for which she received the Alfred Sloan Foundation Screenwriting award (aftereverafterwebseries.com).
A Puerto Rican-Jewish Philadelphia native, Franqui lives with her Kolkata-born husband in Mumbai. America for Beginners is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] satisfying, heartfelt novel about three strangers whose lives are altered on a trip across the U.S.…Franqui adroitly balances all the characters, making them distinct and refreshing. Readers will be taken by this emotionally rewarding novel.
Publishers Weekly
[A] tender, funny, wrenching, beautifully executed tale of three lost souls who traverse the chasms of cultural, generational, and geographical divides to forge some bonds strong and true enough to withstand life's gut punches. —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
Franqui deftly juggles her characters’ competing perspectives, mining small moments in the narrative for larger insights into cultural and personal differences.… This is a humorous and heartfelt excursion into the promise that America represents, to both natives and immigrants.
Booklist
[T]he book is occasionally charming and occasionally engaging; despite everything, you'll want to find out what happens in the end.Clichés and overexplaining get in the way of the humor and genuine sentiment that this novel strains toward.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. "Mrs. Sengupta was traveling scandalously alone, without a husband or a gaggle of women her own age…" Many people in Pival’s orbit are shocked by her decision to go to the US by herself. What about a woman—especially an older woman—traveling alone is so alarming to them? Is it really about safety—as Pival’s maid insists—or about propriety? Are solo women travelers viewed with the same concern in other cultures?
2. "Nothing would erase the sense of continued shame" that Satya feels for abandoning his friend Ravi and edging him out of a job. How do you feel about Satya’s betrayal of Ravi? Is it understandable or unforgivable?
3. Mr. Ghazi sees Rebecca’s "early enthusiasm become a hardened fear, and he worried for her." How do you feel about Rebecca’s sadness and struggles compared to the sadness and struggles of other characters in the book? What does she, the American-born child of an affluent family, stand to learn from the journey, and from the other "beginners?"
4. Ronnie Munshi seems to have achieved the American Dream: arriving from Bangladesh with no money, building a successful business, bringing over a wife, and employing other new arrivals. What do you make of him? Is he the picture of a "model immigrant"? What about the Iranian immigrant Mr. Ghazi?
5. Bhim calls himself "the ice queen" because he is so painfully unaffectionate with Jake in public. Jake "thought that Bhim was determined to live in a way his parents would approve of, despite the fact that they would never know it." Why can’t Bhim just be out and proud in this new gay-friendly country? How do Jake and Bhim navigate Bhim’s deep sense of shame and keep it from destroying their love?
6. Pival reflects that "at home Bangladeshis had no status. They did the worst jobs, if they had jobs at all. They were illegal immigrants with no rights and no names, just men who melted into the background and women who looked hungry all the time." Because of this stigma, Ronnie Munshi is desperate to ensure that none of his Indian clients know he and his guides are Bangladeshi. Does this distinction between Bangladeshis and Indians matter in America? Do "illegal immigrants" in America face the same stigma as those Bangladeshis in India?
7. Pival reflects that "I do think most parents at the heart, want their children to be happy. It is only that we want our children to be happy in the right way. The way we were taught that happiness was. I think this is a cause of much pain, thinking, perhaps, that there is a right way." Would Bhim agree? Would Rebecca, who has her own fraught relationship with her parents?
8. Did you think that Bhim might still be alive, and be reunited with his mother? Why or why not?
9. As a college student, before her marriage, Pival describes herself as "young, alive with purpose." Does she regain her purpose by the end of the novel? How does Pival, the widow and bereaved mother in America, compare to Pival the miserable, voiceless wife in Kolkata?
10. "When she woke, the first thought Pival had was, What happens next?" What do you think happens next for these characters? Where will they be five or ten years after the end of this novel?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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My Dark Vanessa
Kate Elizabeth Russell, 2020
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062941503
Summary
Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.
—2000—
Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
—2017—
Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past.
But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?
Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield.
Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood.
Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kate Elizabeth Russell is originally from eastern Maine. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Kansas and an MFA from Indiana University. My Dark Vanessa is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
At the heart of this explosive and provocative debut is the relationship between a 15-year-old girl and her 42-year-old teacher.… [A] timely tale.
Newsweek
Perhaps the most anticipated first novel of the year, Russell's riveting, timeline-shifting saga of the relationship between a high-school student and her teacher…. [It] is sure to spark conversation (and debate).
Entertainment Weekly
[A] singular achievement—a masterpiece of tension and tone that will simultaneously grip you, horrify you, and move you…. With utmost sensitivity and vivid, gut-churning detail, Russell illuminates Vanessa’s struggle to see the story of her life for the tragedy it truly is. Before you start My Dark Vanessa, clear your schedule for the next few days—this… will utterly consume you.
Esquire
This isn't your cliché trope about a high school student-teacher relationship. Kate Elizabeth Russell brings forth all of the emotion and complexity.
Marie Claire
Likely to totally blow up your group chat (A "Must Read Book").
Bustle
(Starred review) [A]n introspective narrative that fully captures the complexity and necessity of the #MeToo movement in [a] powerful debut.… It also prompts readers to interrogate their own assumptions about victimhood, consent, and agency… a frighteningly sharp debut.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) A deeply relevant debut that the author has been writing since age 16, drawing on her own experiences, and the reading enlightens even as it chills. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
Empathetic, incendiary, and discussable.
Booklist
(Starred review) [A] rich psychological study of the aftermath of abuse…. What emerges is a devastating cultural portrait of enablement and the harm we allow young women to shoulder.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
My Absolute Darling
Gabriel Tallent, 2017
Penguin Publishing
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735211179
Summary
A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles.
But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father.
Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable.
Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. The reader tracks Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, and watches, heart in throat, as she struggles to become her own hero—and in the process, becomes ours as well.
Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1988
• Raised—Mendicino, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Willamette University
• Currently—lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Gabriel Tallent was born in New Mexico and raised on the Mendocino coast by two mothers. He received his B.A. from Willamette University in 2010, and after graduation spent two seasons leading youth trail crews in the backcountry of the Pacific Northwest. Tallent lives in Salt Lake City. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Gabriel Tallent’s debut novel about an abused 14-year-old girl is explosive, and glorious.
Newsday
Every once in awhile there comes along a fictional character—Jane Eyre, Kunta Kinte, Jude St. Francis—whose plight and determination to overcome subsumes the reader so completely, we actually feel ourselves missing him or her after the final page. Turtle, the adolescent protagonist of Gabriel Tallent's debut novel, is that and so much more. For her unconventional wisdom and indomitable inner strength, and for Tallent's descriptive dexterity, which makes everything from Turtle's physical anguish to the smells and sensations of the lush California wilderness around her leap off the page—this is one of the most important books you'll pick up this decade.
Harper's Bazaar
One of EW's favorite books of the year so far…an unputdownable coming-of-age novel.
Entertainment Weekly
In his ferocious, heart-breaking first novel, Tallent deciphers the twisted relationship between Turtle Alveston and her rugged loner father, Martin.… Tallent combines gorgeous passages about the wilderness Turtle knows well and a steady beat of dramatic tension in this smashing debut.
BBC - Between the Lines
[A] gripping, vivid debut.… Readers will root for Turtle as she sets out to escape and be absorbed by Tallent’s stunning descriptions of nature.
RealSimple
Room meets Rambo in this emotionally fraught first novel.… In Turtle, Tallent has crafted a resourceful and resilient character.… In the end, though, Turtle’s story is harrowingly visceral.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Few coming-of-age stories deliver the sheer lyrical power of Tallent’s debut … Lucidly written, both heartbreaking and heartfelt, this book is ultimately affirmative without the slightest sentimentality, and it’s remarkable.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Turtle is an extraordinary character whose thoughts and actions enliven the pages of Tallent’s remarkable first novel…. So vivid is the gorgeously realized setting that it becomes itself a major character in a novel that lingers in the mind long after the final page.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A 14-year-old girl struggles to escape her father's emotional and physical abuse in this harrowing debut. Turtle … is a remarkable teenage hero, heavily damaged but admirably persistent. A powerful, well-turned story about abuse, its consequences, and what it takes to survive it.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available.)
Fruit of the Drunken Tree
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385542722
Summary
A mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogota.
But the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation.
When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction.
As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.
Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories.
In lush prose, Rojas Contreras has written a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Bogota, Columbia
• Education—M.F.A., Columbia College Chicago
• Awards—Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award-Nonfiction
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Guernica, and Huffington Post, among others.
She has received fellowships and awards from The Missouri Review, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, The Camargo Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures.
Contreras currently lives in San Francisco, where she blogs about books for NPR affiliate KQED and teaches fiction at the University of San Francisco. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The use of raw potato to treat any ailment. Guard booths and gates. Buying barrels of water during blackouts. Leaving the television on to know exactly when the electricity comes back on. And the graphic news reports, the car bombs, the kidnappings, the ever-present fear in your gut that something terrible could happen to someone you love at any moment. It's vividly specific details like these that made me wince in recognition while reading Ingrid Rojas Contreras's Fruit of the Drunken Tree, a beautifully rendered novel of an Escobar-era Colombian childhood. Although this debut novel is inspired by the author's personal experiences…you don't need to have grown up in Bogot? to be taken in by Contreras's simple but memorable prose and absorbing story line.… [S]ensitive and thoughtful.
Julianne Pachico - New York Times Book Review
One of the most dazzling and devastating novels I’ve read in a long time.… An exquisitely intimate double portrait of two young women.… Unforgettable.… Readers of Fruit of the Drunken Tree will surely be transformed.
San Francisco Chronicle
Simultaneously propulsive and poetic, reminiscent of Isabel Allende.… Fruit of the Drunken Tree offers a wake-up call for many. An eye-opening story of survival in a place history books and crime sagas (see: "Narcos") would have us think we know better than we do.… Listen to this new author’s voice—she has something powerful to say.
Entertainment Weekly
Original, politically daring, and passionately written—Fruit of the Drunken Tree is the coming-of-age female empowerment story we need in 2018.
Vogue
[F]ull of details about life in early 1990s Colombia during the last year of Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror.… This striking novel offers an atmospheric journey into the narrow choices for even a wealthy family as society crumbles around them.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Rojas Contreras's…does an excellent job of articulating the complicated political situation and illustrating the heartbreaking day-to-day reality for children.… A fascinating, poetic read from an up-and-coming author. —Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA
Library Journal
[I}ncomparable.… Contreras’ deeply personal connection to the setting lends every scene a vital authenticity, and a seemingly unlimited reservoir of striking details brings the action to life…. A riveting, powerful, and fascinating first novel.
Booklist
The perils of day-to-day existence in late-20th-century Colombia …are glimpsed through the eyes of a child and her family's teenage maid…. A tragic history…, and the results are patchy: sometimes constrained by invention, sometimes piercing.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Fruit of the Drunken Tree shifts between the perspectives of Chula and Petrona. How do the dual perspectives impact your reading of the novel? What would be lost without Chula’s perspective? Without Petrona’s?
2. During most of the novel, Chula narrates Fruit of the Drunken Tree as a child. How did the child narration effect your reading experience? Did you enjoy that perspective?
3. The author does a great job of showing the many sides to a story, and develops each character fully. With which character did you sympathize the most? The least?
4. When Chula is brought back to her mother after the kidnapping attempt, she doesn’t understand her mother’s anger and protests "but [Petrona] brought me back." Who do you side with? Do you think Petrona deserves forgiveness?
5. Did you understand Petrona’s final decision to stay with Gorrion? Were you surprised to learn that she married him? Why?
6. The symbol of the drunken tree figures heavily into the novel. How does Ingrid use this symbol? What is its significance?
7. There are many mentions of supernatural elements (witches, ghosts, tarot cards) in Fruit of the Drunken Tree. Why do you think the author included them? And what do they add to your reading experience?
8. What did you know about Colombia before reading this novel? Did the book change your perspective?
9. At the end of the novel, you find out that much of the story is based off of experiences from the author’s life. Did you know it was autofiction? If not, how did that knowledge add to your overall reading of the book?
10. Each character in the novel copes with trauma in a different way. How do their strategies compare to one another? How do you imagine you would react to a similar experience?
11. Did Chula’s experience immigrating to the US impact your understanding of refugees and immigrants? Do you feel that you have more empathy after reading it?
12. What do you envision happens to the characters after the book ends?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Mirror & the Light (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 3)
Hilary Mantel, 2020
Henry Holt & Co.
748 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805096606
Summary
“If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?”
With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.
—The story begins in May 1536—
Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner.
As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.
Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform.
But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?
Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time.
Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.. (From the publisher.)
Wolf Hall, the first book in Mantel's trilogy was published in 2009; the second volume, Bring Up the Bodies came out in 2012. Both books won the Man Booker Prize.
Author Bio
• Birth—July 6, 1952
• Where—Glossop, Derbyshire, England, UK
• Education—University of Sheffield
• Awards—(See below)
• Currently—lives in England
Hilary Mary Mantel CBE* is an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards.
Mantel's best known work is her Wolf Hall Trilogy, 2009-2020. She won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, the series' first volume, and won the prize a second time in 2012 for the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. (Mantel thus became the first British writer and the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize more than once.) The Mirror and the Light, the trilogy's final installment, came out in 2020.
Mantel was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, and was brought up in the Derbyshire mill village of Hadfield, attending the local Roman Catholic primary school. Her family is of Irish origin but her parents, Margaret and Henry Thompson, were born in England. After losing touch with her father at the age of eleven, she took the name of her stepfather, Jack Mantel. Her family background, the mainspring of much of her fiction, is explained in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.
Mantel attended Harrytown Convent in Romiley, Cheshire, and in 1970 went to the London School of Economics to read law. She transferred to the University of Sheffield and graduated as Bachelor of Jurisprudence in 1973. After graduating she worked in the social work department of a geriatric hospital, and then as a saleswoman. In 1974 she began writing a novel about the French Revolution, which was later published as A Place of Greater Safety.
In 1977 she went to live in Botswana with her husband, Gerald McEwen, a geologist, whom she had married in 1972. Later they spent four years in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia—a memoir of this time, Someone to Disturb, has been published in the London Review of Books. During her twenties she suffered from a debilitating and painful illness. This was initially diagnosed as a psychiatric illness for which she was hospitalised and treated with anti-psychotic drugs. These produced a paradoxical reaction of psychotic symptoms and for some years she refrained from seeking help from doctors. Finally, in Africa, and desperate, she consulted a medical text-book and realised she was probably suffering from a severe form of endometriosis, a diagnosis confirmed back in London. The condition and necessary surgery left her unable to have children and continued to disrupt her life, with continued treatment by steroids radically changing her appearance. She is now patron of the Endometriosis SHE Trust.
Novels
Her first novel, Every Day is Mother's Day, was published in 1985, and its sequel, Vacant Possession, a year later. After returning to England, she became the film critic of The Spectator and a reviewer for a number of papers and magazines in Britain and the United States.
Her novel Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988), which drew on her first-hand experience in Saudi Arabia, uses a threatening clash of values between the neighbours in a city apartment block to explore the tensions between Muslim culture and the liberal West.
Her Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize-winning novel Fludd is set in 1956 in a fictitious northern village called Fetherhoughton, centring on a Roman Catholic church and a convent. A mysterious stranger brings about transformations in the lives of those around him.
A Place of Greater Safety (1992) won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award, for which her two previous books had been shortlisted. A long and historically accurate novel, it traces the career of three French revolutionaries, Danton, Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, from childhood to their early deaths during the Reign of Terror of 1794.
A Change of Climate (1994), set in rural Norfolk, explores the lives of Ralph and Anna Eldred, as they raise their four children and devote their lives to charity. It includes chapters about their early married life as missionaries in South Africa, when they were imprisoned and deported to Bechuanaland, and the tragedy that occurred there.
An Experiment in Love (1996), which won the Hawthornden Prize, takes place over two university terms in 1970. It follows the progress of three girls—two friends and one enemy—as they leave home and attend university in London. Margaret Thatcher makes a cameo appearance in this novel, which explores women’s appetites and ambitions, and suggests how they are often thwarted. Though Mantel has used material from her own life, it is not an autobiographical novel.
Her next book, The Giant, O'Brien (1998), is set in the 1780s, and is based on the true story of Charles O'Brien or Byrne. He came to London to earn money by displaying himself as a freak. His bones hang today in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The novel treats O'Brien and his antagonist, the Scots surgeon John Hunter, less as characters in history than as mythic protagonists in a dark and violent fairytale, necessary casualties of the Age of Enlightenment. She adapted the book for BBC Radio 4, in a play starring Alex Norton (as Hunter) and Frances Tomelty.
In 2003, Mantel published her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, which won the MIND Book of the Year award. That same year she brought out a collection of short stories, Learning To Talk. All the stories deal with childhood and, taken together, the books show how the events of a life are mediated as fiction. Her 2005 novel, Beyond Black, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Set in the years around the second millennium, it features a professional medium, Alison Hart, whose calm and jolly exterior conceals grotesque psychic damage. She trails around with her a troupe of 'fiends', who are invisible but always on the verge of becoming flesh.
The long novel Wolf Hall, about Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell, was published in 2009 to critical acclaim. The book won that year's Man Booker Prize and, upon winning the award, Mantel said, "I can tell you at this moment I am happily flying through the air." Judges voted three to two in favour of Wolf Hall for the prize. Mantel was presented with a trophy and a £50,000 cash prize during an evening ceremony at the London Guildhall. The accounted for 45% of the sales of all the nominated books. On receiving the prize, Mantel said that she would spend the prize money on "sex and drugs and rock' n' roll".
The sequel to Wolf Hall—Bring Up the Bodies—was published in 2012, also to wide acclaim. It won the 2012 Costa Book of the Year and the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Mantel is working on the third novel of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, called The Mirror and the Light.
She is also working on a short non-fiction book called The Woman Who Died of Robespierre, about the Polish playwright Stanisława Przybyszewska. Mantel also writes reviews and essays, mainly for the Guardian, London Review of Books and New York Review of Books. The Culture Show programme on BBC 2 broadcast a profile of Mantel on 17 September 2011.
In September 2014, in an interview published in the Guardian, Mantel confessed to fantasizing about the murdering of Margaret Thatcher in 1983, and fictionalized the event in a short story called "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: 6 August 1983." That story became the title story in her 2014 collection.
Awards
1987 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize
1990 Southern Arts Literature Prize for Fludd
1990 Cheltenham Prize for Fludd
1990 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for Fludd
1992 Sunday Express Book of the Year for A Place of Greater Safety
1996 Hawthornden Prize for An Experiment in Love
2003 MIND Book of the Year for Giving Up the Ghost (A Memoir)
2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall
2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Wolf Hall
2010 Walter Scott Prize for Wolf Hall
2012 Man Booker Prize for Bring Up the Bodies
2012 Costa Book Awards (Novel) for Bring Up the Bodies
2012 Costa Book Awards (Book of the Year) for Bring Up the Bodies
2013 David Cohen Prize
She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to literature.(Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/13/2014.)
*Commander of the British Empire
Book Reviews
It is impossible not to admit that this final volume… becomes woefully labored. Thomas Cromwell is a marvelous prism and a phenomenally round character, but by the time we’ve had 1,700 pages of him, he is drastically overdetermined.… The Wolf Hall trilogy is probably the greatest historical fiction accomplishment of the past decade; the first two volumes both won Man Booker Prizes. But after Bring Up the Bodies the enterprise, like Henry, has put on weight and self-importance. The final book feels heavier with food and custom and ceremony; catalogs of saints' relics, clothing and wedding presents.… After the vast and painstaking narrative that has preceded them, the book’s final 75 pages may actually feel rushed, but the speed is artistically appropriate to the abruptness of the matter.
Thomas Mallon - New York Times Book Review
Wolf Hall, a decade ago, was a sensational character study that electrified an often-visited slice of history. The Mirror & the Light marks a triumphant end to a spellbinding story.
NPR
Breathtaking…. The plot here is shaped as meticulously as any thriller…. With this trilogy, Mantel has redefined what the historical novel is capable of…. Taken together, her Cromwell novels are, for my money, the greatest English novels of this century. Someone give the Booker Prize judges the rest of the year off. Stephanie Merritt - Guardian (UK)
Majestic and often breathtakingly poetic…. What The Mirror & the Light offers―even more than the two previous volumes―is engulfing, total sensory immersion in a world…. As with the most powerful and enduring historical fictions, the book grips the reader most tightly when, as is often the case, the writing comes as close to poetry as prose ever may.
Simon Schama - Financial Times (UK)
A masterpiece…. A novel of epic proportions [that is] every bit as thrilling, propulsive, darkly comic and stupendously intelligent as its predecessors…. The trilogy is complete and it is magnificent.
Alexandra Harris - Guardian (UK)
This is rich, full-bodied fiction. Indeed, it might well be the best of the trilogy simply because there is more of it, a treasure on every page…. The brisk, present-tense narration makes you feel as though you are watching these long-settled events live, via a shaky camera phone…. Mantel has… elevated historical fiction as an art form…. At a time when the general movement of literature has been towards the margins, she has taken us to the dark heart of history
London Times (UK)
Hilary Mantel has written an epic of English history that does what the Aeneid did for the Romans and War and Peace for the Russians…. As Cromwell approaches his end, cast off by an ungrateful master, Mantel pulls together the strands of his life into a sublime tapestry.
Telegraph (UK)
Cromwell is a character for the ages…. The stunning success of the novels is in large part the result of Ms. Mantel’s skill in fashioning a voice and persona that, while never anachronistic, make Cromwell seem eerily contemporary…. Mantel’s genius is to make his 16th-century instincts, such as a willingness to decapitate anyone standing in his path, seem as plausible as his more familiar qualities.
Economist (UK)
Another masterpiece of historical fiction…. The Mirror & the Light is superb, right to the last crimson drop…. A complex, insightful exploration of power, sex, loyalty, friendship, religion, class and statecraft…. A stunning conclusion to one of the great trilogies of our times.
Independent (UK)
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)