A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

Description

---

As 19th-century novelists Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens both discovered, the French Revolution makes for great drama. This lesson has not been lost on Hilary Mantel, whose A Place of Greater Safety brings a 20th-century sensibility to the stirring events of 1789. Mantel's approach is nothing if not ambitious: her three main characters, Georges-Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre, and Camille Desmoulins, happen to have been major players in the early days of the revolution--men whose mix of ambition, idealism, and ego helped unleash the Terror and brought them eventually to their own tragic ends. As Mantel points out in her forward, none of these men was famous before the revolution; thus not a great deal is known about their early lives. What would constrain the biographer, however, is an open invitation to the fiction writer to let the imagination run wild; thus Mantel freely extrapolates from what is known of her protagonists' personalities and relationships with each other to construct their pasts.

This is a huge, complex novel, but the author has done her homework. Though Danton, Robespierre, and Desmoulins are at the center of her story, they are by no means the only major characters who populate the novel. Mantel uses historical figures as well as fictional ones to provide different points of view on the story. As she moves from one to the next, her narrative voice changes back and forth from first to third person as she sometimes grants us access to her characters' deepest thoughts and feelings, and other times keeps us guessing. A Place of Greater Safety is a happy marriage of literary and historical fiction, and a bona fide page-turner, as well. --Margaret Prior

---

Customer Reviews

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.

2010-07-10 | David Keymer (Modesto CA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

---

Labored and uninspired treatment of leading French Revolutionary figures
"Today we stormed the Bastille; I got there late; I heard it was bloody. Then I went home and had an argument with my mistress about the laundry. And she spends too much time gossiping with the concierge. Hmmm, what's that I smell for dinner?" This parody is a little harsh, but it serves to underline the overall problem with the effort; such a rich subject deserved much better.

This novel tells the story of the French Revolution through the lives of its three major characters: Camille Desmoulins, Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, two of whom were members of the decidely unsafe Committee for Public Safety, and all three of whom were consumed via the guillotine in the most unsafe year of 1794.

For someone like myself, who finds the French Revolution fascinating, this would seem to be the best of all possible worlds: A novelistic treatment of the turbulent and never dull times surrounding the events that usher in modern Europe, allowing me to experience, through the fantastical reconstructions of actual participants in those events, what it might feel like to live in those times. Alas, if it were only so! Unfortunately, the author too often manages to make those times feel pedestrian and ordinary and domestic, rather than vibrant and alive.

2010-07-07 | Thomas A. Wiebe (Tigard, OR USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

---

Good Intentions that led to the Terror
Hilary Mantel brings her unique writing style to the French Revolution. She follows from childhood the 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.

2010-04-22 | bird watcher (Southern Oregon coast) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

---

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?

2010-04-01 | Carlos Eduardo Rebello de Mendonça (Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

---

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.

2010-03-29 (San Francisco, CA USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

---

A Change of Climate: A Novel

Description

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.

---

Customer Reviews

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.

2005-08-09 | mojavejoe (Mentone Beach) | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 5

---

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.

2004-11-21 | luansos (Dana Point, CA USA) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 4

---

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.

2003-03-31 (the home of the Blue Angels) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 4

---

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.

2001-07-09 | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 2

---

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." In his rebellion against his parents, their closed, religiously fundamentalist point of view, and his father's financial blackmailing regarding his career choices, Ralph intentionally changes his physical habitat and his climate by escaping to South Africa with his bride.

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

As the story bounces from the present in England back twenty years to Africa, the reader lives through the vivid and terrible African experiences and simultaneously sees how they have permeated the lives of these good, but often naïve, people. Both Ralph and Anna have rejected the traditional religion of their parents in favor of doing good deeds in their family lives and through a social service trust. But as Ralph's uncle James points out, "There is nothing so appallingly hard...as the business of being human."

While the reader cheers as James grows and eventually embraces life, s/he also fears for Anna, who remains emotionally closed, despite her good deeds, fearful that she "should lose everything, one of these days." As the events resolve themselves and the "competition in goodness" comes to an end, we see real humans trying to put aside the petrified past and to change the climate of their lives, and we will, perhaps, evaluate our own lives. Can we accept change, or are we dinosaurs at heart?

2000-07-11 (New England) | Helpful Votes: 31 | Rating: 4

---

Wolf Hall: A Novel (Man Booker Prize)

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780805080681
• Adapt: New
• Notes: BUY WITH Courage, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and checking to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Description

---

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

---

Customer Reviews

The delivery of this book is interesting but also jarring...
The prose style makes this a difficult book to read. The lack of quotation marks and use of "he" to describe Thomas Cromwell's thoughts and statements had me frequently re-reading. The inconsistent use of full names or formal titles instead of full names had me constantly flipping back to the index. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that half of the women in Tudor England were named Mary, and half the men were named Thomas.

History presented as a series of vignettes can be both interesting and entertaining, and E.L. Doctorow is a master of this style. Mantel does not quite pull it off, and the result is a jumpy, incoherent narrative. She hits high notes such as Thomas More lying about the manner of Thomas Bilney's execution, thereby stealing both Bilney's life and death. The exchanges between Cromwell and More are memorable, particularly the "a lie a thousand years old is still a lie" when describing the history of the Roman Catholic Church. The description of Cromwell's mind never resting (running the numbers late at night on provisioning the Irish campaign or the value of the belongings of an executed nun in Kent) is a nice touch.

Thomas Cromwell's relentless practicality and clear-eyed view of where the political chips were falling was contrasted perfectly with Thomas More's false humility and self-inflicted martyrdom.

The book ends very well with Cromwell calculating a trip to Wolf Hall, home to the Seymour family and Henry VIII's next wife.

2010-07-27 | Mark Clegg (Atlanta, GA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

---

Suspect History
Sad to say, I have to agree with all the other reviewers who were disappointed in Wolf Hall.
To begin with the story doesn't even get to that locale until the end of the book.
Since I'm a very stubborn person I am determined to finish the book, but can surely sympathize with he reviewers who could not finish it.
I also love historical fiction and as a devoted reader of that genre expect a modicum of historical accuracy from the author. I was surprised that no bibliography was provided.
Since Cromwell is the "hero" of the story, someone had to be a villain. The author chose Thomas More. Odd choice, I have to admit, but I'd like to see her assertions backed up by serious research. If not, I'd have to say she had an animosity agains More and the Catholics of the era he represents. Surely, they were not angels, but More's depiction is perculiarly vicious and one sided. It is at complete variance with other books of the era I have read.

2010-07-22 | Karl May fan (La Quinta, Ca., USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

---

Wolf Hall
This is a difficult book to read. With that in mind I will continue reading in order to see if the book improves in its narrative. The grammer is poorly edited, the voice is unclear and the extra details are distracting. As far as being a "good read" of an historical novel this misses the point.

2010-07-22 | kindlefrance (france) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

---

Crushingly dull, dull, dull.
No plot, characters that are impossible to love or hate. Long tedious prose. A victory of hype and hyperbole. After this and White Tiger, the Booker Prize has lost all credibility. And so have all the idiots who gave permission to be quoted on the cover and inside.

2010-07-22 | K Schuster (Asia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

---

"My Kingdom for Quotation Marks"
I have about 50 pages left to go with Wolf Hall, and I will finish it because I'm completely absorbed in the character of Cromwell, and his family. This is a very good book, scholarly but not too bookish. So WHY does the author switch back & forth between the use and non-use of quotation marks for conversation? Even in the same paragraph? It's infuriating. As others have noted, the universal "he" also makes reading this book so much more challenging than necessary. I think I have read about 70% of this book twice, paragraph by paragraph. I wonder if Mandel will reimburse me for 2 weeks of overdue library fines.

2010-07-21 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

---

Fludd: A Novel

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.

---

Fetherhoughton, the shabby and provincial village of Hilary Mantel's fifth novel, Fludd, possesses a charm that is, at best, latent. The surrounding moorland is foreboding, the populace is querulous and ill-educated, and the presiding priest is an atheist. It's 1956, and drabness is general to this English backwater. Until, that is, the appearance of a disarming young priest who, apparently, has been dispatched to wrest Fetherhoughton out of its superstitious stupor. One of the novel's several wonders is that Fludd surpasses all expectations.

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

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

---

Customer Reviews

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.

2010-07-01 (San Francisco, CA USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

---

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.

2010-06-02 (Oregon USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

---

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.

2009-05-04 (Chicago) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

---

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.

2008-02-07 | Angela B. (Seattle, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

---

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 primitive village. Fludd remains enigmatic but perhaps that is the point and I didn't think deeper about the alchemy implied.

2006-11-09 (Princeton, NJ USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

---

Beyond Black: A Novel

Product Details

• Acclimate: New
• Notes: BUY WITH Nerve, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and repair to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• ISBN13: 9780312426057

Description

---

Customer Reviews

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.

2010-04-11 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

---

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.

2009-04-25 (Arlington, VA United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

---

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.

2008-10-20 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

---

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...

2008-08-11 | Consultant (Near Washington DC) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 2

---

From the banal to the mundane - a quick overview of today's spiritualists
Well, I must say, after laughing my way through Mary Roach's wonderful "Spook," a non-fiction expose of early 20th century spiritualism, I was ready to give Hilary Mantel a try. I was certainly not disappointed. Mary Roach had me in stitches over cheesecloth nasal packing presenting itself as "ectoplasm." Mantel, on the other hand, gave me a spiritualist one could love, an overweight, insecure and tender-hearted medium who puts up with both worldly and supernatural nastiness until her own good deed frees her.

A recent New Yorker article on Mantel gave me the idea that she might have something to tell me, and I was happily right. I was already prepared for the eerie and inexplicable; Mary Roach, however, prepared me for
mediums fortified with cooking sherry and booking rooms in pubs and bowling alleys. As I was completely new to Mantel, I found myself immersed in her unique mix of humor and ugliness. I was just delighted when a grey sock turned up in Colette's dryer (a very ominous sign), and when Al found her new spirit guides to be two little old ladies who required padded drawers on outings.

I'll read Mantel again, that's a certainty. In the meantime, it's four stars for "Beyond Black"...and an unconditional plug for Mary Roach's "Spook," while we're at it!

2007-02-19 | constant reader (Monroe, MI USA) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 4

---

Every Day Is Mother's Day

Description

---

Customer Reviews

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.

2001-11-14 (Queens, New York) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

---

Evil Among US
Hilary Mantel is one of a kind. She is inconcerned with surfaces and deals with the subconscious activity of the forces of Good and Evil, both of our own devising and of other realms of authority entirely. EVERY DAY IS MOTHER'S DAY is a story of incremental evil and madness loosed on a selectively perceiving world, the activity of the truly wicked being obscured by the preconceptions and the predilections of those who, sidelong and reluctant, observe it. One little horror engenders another, each larger than the last, until chaos is unleashed and, still, unappreciated for what it is, is embraced by those who are certain to become its next victims. This is a novel of real terror, and part of the horror is that it will make you laugh.

2000-08-11 | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 4

---

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 the outcome of all their interaction was not develped nearly enough. The entanglment of the characters had good plot potential, but ended up being VERY anticlimactic. I felt like the book was unfinished and probably needed at least another hundred pages or so to round out the characters and their situations. It even felt as if it was published exactly as the first draft was written, without any content editing, rewriting or further plot development. Every Day is Mother's Day is a book that had promise, but fell quite short of it's potential.

2000-04-04 | Helpful Votes: 17 | Rating: 1

---

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, the occasionally chilling plot, the astringent prose and the biting humor from the outset. Immediately after I finished this book, I plunged into its sequel, Vacant Posession. But I don't recommend reading them when you're home alone at night. Mantel's decription of madness is so convincing, I briefly feared for my own sanity for a minute or two while reading it.

1999-04-20 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

---