An Experiment in Love - Hardcover

Mantel, Hilary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805044272 ISBN 13: 9780805044270

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1996

Synopsis

Propelled by the ambitions of her Irish-Catholic, working-class mother, who desperately wants her daughter to escape the hard life, Carmel McBain strives for success and experiences the poignant loss of family ties and faith.

About this title

Review:

"With all its brilliance, its sharpness, and its clear-eyed wit, "An Experiment in Love" is a haunting book."--Margaret Atwood, "The New York Times Book Review" "Mantel has several points in common with Graham Greene: she can make your flesh creep with horror and especially with the apprehension of it."--"New York Review of Books" "Terrifically satisfying."--"Elle"

From the Back Cover:

Carmel McBain is the only child of working-class Irish-Catholic parents. Her mother aspires to something more for her than what life in their depressed mill town has to offer. She is ambitious for her daughter, determined that she slip through England's rigid social barriers. And so, early on, she pushes Carmel, first to gain a scholarship to the local convent school, then to sit the exams for a place at London University. And Carmel does not disappoint. But success carries with it a fearful price. It sets her on a lonely journey that will take her as far as possible from where she began, uprooting her from the ties of class and place, of family and faith. Uprooting her ultimately from her own self. A coming-of-age novel, a memoir of a Catholic childhood, a piercing and witty look at social pretensions, a story of lost possibilities and girlhood betrayals: perhaps only a novelist of Hilary Mantel's enormous talents could have taken such material and shaped it into so fresh and arresting a tale.

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0805044272
• ISBN 13: 9780805044270
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 250