"The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher" by Hilary Mantel (2014)

"I said, ''It's the fake femininity I can't stand, and the counterfeit voice. The way she boasts about her dad the grocer and what he taught her, but you know she would change it all if she could, and be born to rich people. It's the way she loves the rich, the way she worships them. It's her philistinism, her ignorance, and the way she revels in her ignorance. It's her lack of pity. Why does she need an eye operation? Is it because she can't cry?''

Debunking idiotic right wing reaction to this story

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/24/hilary_mantel_is_not_a_terrorist_debunking_the_ludicrous_right_wing_backlash_to_her_short_story/

It is not often that a short story plot generates international outrage.  "The Assissination of Margaret Thatcher", the title story in Hilary Martel's new collection of short stories has done just that with its story about a middle aged middle class English woman chatting with and even helping a bit a professional killer who broke into her house as a vantage point to shoot Mrs. thatcher. Martel has stocked the fires, and perhaps sales, by talking to the British press about how much she hated the Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister of England 1979 to 1990) and how she had fantasied about killing her.    Those who disliked Thatcher were often not just adverse to her very right wing politics but also hated her personally as a worshiper of the rich and many found her personally "phony".  She was also seen as strongly anti-Irish.

The fascination and fun of this story is in the interaction of the assassin and the lady whose house he has illegally entered.  These two people very different worlds share a common hatred for Thatcher.  The killer seems in the pay of The Irish Reublican Army.  He hates her for her political views, the woman thinks she is phony and hates her personally.  The conversations are almost surrealistic in the very unlikely meeting of these two very different people.  

This is a very clever creative story I greatly enjoyed reading.  It is online here.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/19/hilary-mantel-short-story-assassination-margaret-thatcher

Mel u

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009, 604 pages, 1448 KB)

I must be one of the last people to get around to reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (UK, 1953).   It won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, among other awards.   The sequel to this novel, Brings up the Bodies (a third work in the sequence is expected) won the 2012 Man Booker Prize.

Wolf Hall is fictionalized biography of an important figure in the court of King Henry VIII of England, Thomas Cromwell.   There are lots of  book blog posts on this novel and over 700 Amazon reviews so I will not add to this  volume very much.  Much of the plot action of the book centers around the king's wish for a divorce.   It follows carefully the facts of Cromwell's life and lets us see how the court and the clerics worked and interacted.   It is set in the 1520s.

This is universally regarded as first rate historical fiction and I will just say I agree with the consensus.  I hope to read Brings Up the Bodies in 2013.

"The Heart Fails Without Warning" by Hilary Mantel

"The Heart Fails Without Warning" by Hilary Mantel (2010, 15 pages)


One practical use for short stories is as a way of "trying out" a writer before you attempt a longer work.   There are millions of readers without access to libraries so this is an important thing to lots of people.    

I have lately been looking at the anthologies of short stories available on the Amazon Kindle store for the Ipad from which a sample can be downloaded.  (Remember you do not need a kindle or an Ipad to read kindle edition books, just the free Amazon supplied software.)  I have found in these samples you get the introduction to the anthology and one to three complete stories.    You also get the table of contents so you have all you need to make an informed buying decision.

In Best European Fiction 2011 a story by Hilary Martel, "The Heart Fails Without Warning" is included in the sample.  I was really glad to see this as I have been pondering if I wanted to invest the time it would take to read her 2009 Booker Prize Novel Wolf Hall.  Wolf Hall is set in England in the 1520s and centers on court intrigue in the reign of Henry VIII.   It was a very blogged about novel and most people liked it a lot while calling it "challenging".   

"The Heart Fails Without Warning" by Hilary Martel (1952, UK) is just a perfect short story.   It  introduces the characters, it sets up and resolves a conflict and crisis in a way that helps the characters and perhaps the reader increase their insight into the human condition.  It is also a study in loneliness and about those who have no voice for themselves.   The prose style is simple, elegant and of great beauty.

Basically the story is about a family, a husband who works very hard and long but does not speak much, his wife who on the surface runs the family, the daughter who is has a very terrible eating disorder which is causing her to waste a way to a skeleton, and their other teen age daughter who is quite the brat but I liked her anyway.   

The family life is totally centered on keeping the one daughter alive.   The other daughter greatly resents this and may see what the real problem is where here parents do not.   Anyone who has ever had their lives dominated by the illness of a loved one will understand this story more than they may care to admit.   There is really high intelligence behind this story.   

I will leave the rest of the plot unspoiled but I have added Wolf Hall to my TBR list based on this story.  

Please share your experience with other works by Mantel, including Wolf Hall, with us.

Mel u