GIVING UP THE GHOST: A memoir: The shocking and beautiful memoir from the Booker Prize-winning and bestselling author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, now a major TV series - Softcover

Mantel, Hilary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007142722 ISBN 13: 9780007142729

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2010

Synopsis

From the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of ‘Wolf Hall’, a wry, shocking and beautiful memoir of childhood, ghosts, hauntings, illness and family.

‘Giving up the Ghost’ is award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel's uniquely unusual five-part autobiography.

Opening in 1995 with 'A Second Home', Mantel describes the death of her stepfather which leaves her deeply troubled by the unresolved events of her childhood. In 'Now Geoffrey Don't Torment Her' Mantel takes the reader into the muffled consciousness of her early childhood, culminating in the birth of a younger brother and the strange candlelight ceremony of her mother's 'churching'. In 'Smile', an account of teenage perplexity, Mantel describes a household where the keeping of secrets has become a way of life. Finally, at the memoir's conclusion, Mantel explains how through a series of medical misunderstandings and neglect she came to be childless and how the ghosts of the unborn like chances missed or pages unturned, have come to haunt her life as a writer.

About this title

Review

'She is by turns facetious, matter-of-fact, visionary and comical but always totally riveting.' Daily Telegraph

'Simply astonishing - clear and true.' Guardian

'An extraordinary story, sometimes comic, often grim, but most importantly it is a story of survival.' Spectator

'A masterpiece of wit...[the] past, so thoroughly vanished, is made to live again here.' Rachel Cusk

‘What a remarkable writer she is. She is piercingly, even laceratingly observant ... a very startling and daring memoir; the more I read it the more unsettling it becomes.’ Helen Dunmore

‘I was riveted. It’s raw, it’s distressing and it’s full of piercing insights into a first-rate novelist’s mind.’ Margaret Forster

‘A stunning evocation of an ill-fitting childhood and a womanhood blighted by medical ineptitude. Hilary Mantel’s frank and beautiful memoir is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.’ Clare Boylan

Synopsis

From one of Britain's finest authors at work today, a wry, shocking and beautifully-written memoir of childhood, ghosts (real and metaphorical), illness and family. At no. 58 the top of my head comes to the outermost curve of my great-aunt, Annie Connor. Her shape is like the full moon, her smile is beaming; the outer rim of her is covered by her pinny, woven with tiny flowers. It is soft from washing; her hands are hard and chapped; it is barely ten o'clock and she is getting the cabbage on. 'Hello, Our Ilary,' she says; my family has named me aspirationally, but aspiration doesn't stretch to the 'H'. Giving Up the Ghost is award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel's wry, shocking and uniquely unusual five-part autobiography of childhood, ghosts, illness and family. It opens in 1995 with 'A Second Home', in which Mantel describes the death of her stepfather, a death which leaves her deeply troubled by the unresolved events of childhood. 'Now Geoffrey Don't Torment Her' begins in typical, gripping Mantel fashion: 'Two of my relatives have died by fire.

' Set during the 1950s, it takes the reader into the muffled consciousness of her early childhood, culminating with the birth of a younger brother and the strange candlelit ceremony of her mother's 'churching'. In 'The Secret Garden' Mantel moves to a haunted house and mysteriously gains a stepfather. When she is almost eleven, her family flee the gossips and the ghosts, and resolve to start a new life. 'Smile' is an account of teenage perplexity, in a household where the keeping of secrets has become a way of life. Convent school provides a certain sanctuary, with tacit assistance from the fearsome 'Top Nun. ' In the final section, the author tells how, through medical misunderstandings and neglect, she came to be childless, and how the ghosts of the unborn, like chances missed or pages unturned, have come to haunt her life as a writer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0007142722
• ISBN 13: 9780007142729
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272