‘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.
Hilary Mantel's memoir is, for me, the best depiction of childhood and what it is like to be truly naive in all the right ways. There's a brilliant moment after Mantel's first day at school where she feels she's had a go at 'school', on balance felt she preferred being at home, so assumed she didn't have to go back. For some reason I found this hilarious and adorable - I mean why should a child know school was compulsory??
The memoir does look at Mantel's childhood and the unusual set up she had at home but, told through her eyes as a child, there is no boasting of strangeness, no boasting of any kind. It's just told naively and straightly, which I found very appealing. I mean no family is 'normal', mine certainly has some.. eccentricities.. but you only find out that those eccentricities are eccentricities later. I mean no child really thinks 'this set up is odd', they find out later.
Mantel later goes into her medical history, which is simply extraordinary. What she's been through you can only begin to understand when you read this book. I read a few very cruel comments about Mantel following the 'Kate Middleton' fiasco and it's almost funny how ignorant some of those criticisms were - think they should all be sent a copy of this book...
7/10
The memoir does look at Mantel's childhood and the unusual set up she had at home but, told through her eyes as a child, there is no boasting of strangeness, no boasting of any kind. It's just told naively and straightly, which I found very appealing. I mean no family is 'normal', mine certainly has some.. eccentricities.. but you only find out that those eccentricities are eccentricities later. I mean no child really thinks 'this set up is odd', they find out later.
Mantel later goes into her medical history, which is simply extraordinary. What she's been through you can only begin to understand when you read this book. I read a few very cruel comments about Mantel following the 'Kate Middleton' fiasco and it's almost funny how ignorant some of those criticisms were - think they should all be sent a copy of this book...
7/10
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