Giant, O'Brien [Paperback]

Hilary Mantel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 3, 1999

Based on the true story, this is the tale of the 18th Century Irish giant, Charles O'Brien. He was exhibited in London and eventually dissected by the surgeon Charles Hunter, and his bones hang to this day in the Hunterian Museum in Lincoln's Inn Field. Charles O'Brien, bard and giant. The cynical are moved by his flights of romance; the craven stirred by his tales of epic deeds. But what of his own story as he is led from Ireland to seek his fortune beyond the seas in England? The Surprising Irish Giant may be the sensation of the season but only his compatriots seem to attend to his mythic powers of invention. A motley court surrounds him: slow witted Jankin; the thrusting Claffey brothers; sharp-tongued Bride Claskey, the procuress. None so low as Bitch Mary, and none so opportunistic as impressario Joe Vance, yet London shall make its mark on them all. In addition to the daunting task of taking his storytelling across the sea, The Giant O'Brien must be wary of John Hunter, a celebrated surgeon and anatomist who buys dead men from the gallows and the corpses of babies by the inch. The only problem for John Hunter is that the Giant is still alive. But for how long? 'The Giant, O' Brien' is an unforgettable novel; lyrical, shocking and spliced with black comedy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Like Andrew Miller (Ingenious Pain, Casanova in Love) and Penelope Fitzgerald (The Blue Flower), Hilary Mantel turns to the 18th century in order to make a universal point. Her eighth novel, The Giant, O'Brien, takes place during that bifurcation of mind and spirit known as the Age of Reason. The year is 1782 and Charles O'Brien has fled Ireland, bringing both his massive frame and his ancient folk tales to England, where he hopes to make his fortune as a sideshow exhibit. "His appetite was great, as befitted him; he could eat a granary, he could drink a barrel. But now that all Ireland is coming down to ruin together, how will giants thrive? He had made a living by going about and being a pleasant visitor who fetched not just the gift of his giant presence but also stories and songs ... many hearths had welcomed him as a prodigy, a conversationalist, an illustration from nature's book. Nature's book is little read now, and he thought this: I had better make a living in the obvious way. I will make a living from being tall."

Unfortunately, O'Brien's height attracts more attention than he might like: John Hunter, a surgeon, becomes fascinated with the giant and obsessed with the possibility of dissecting him after he's dead. Thus Mantel sets up the central conflict of her novel: Hunter's thirst for knowledge and fame versus O'Brien's conviction that without his body his soul cannot go to heaven. In the mean streets of 18th-century London, the author explores the division of soul and body, imagination and rationalism, as she juxtaposes the two men's lives. In this collision of cultures and points of view, she offers no easy answers, but instead turns a disturbing spotlight on questions that continue to resonate to the present day. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The most engaging moments in Mantel's intriguing new novel occur when the uneducated Irish characters who make up the loutish retinue of "the Giant, O'Brien" converse. Perfectly imagining the vocabulary and inflections of Irish peasants whose stark ignorance leaves them agape at the wonders of 1782 London, Mantel produces dialogue that is at once credible and funny. Here, as in many of her novels (Eight Months on Ghazzah Street; An Experiment in Love), cultures collide, and individual human beings suffer as a consequence. Taking as her inspiration the 18th-century Irish giant Charles Byrnes, whose bones are still on exhibit in a London museum, Mantel has imagined the fate of the man, who leaves the dire poverty and scorched earth of the Irish countryside and comes to London entertaining grandiose fantasies of riches and respect, but who encounters disillusionment and his own mortality instead. In counterpoint to the giant, who lives in Ireland's glorious past, spinning folktales and fables to earn his bread, another emigre to London, Scottish surgeon James Hunter (also a real figure), is obsessed with the "modern" lure of scientific research, for which he needs bodies. Generally dependent on grave robbers for his corpses, Hunter realizes that the giant is moribund, and plots to win the cadaver. Mantel makes the most of the contrast between the steel-willed, splenetic Hunter and the gentle giant, a hedgerow scholar whose generous nature and naivete are his undoing. Her picture of late-18th-century London is brilliant?especially the gloom, filth and squalor in which the lower class exists, ruled by prejudice, superstition and strong drink. She also hits home with witty comments about the national characteristics of the English and the Irish. While the narrative fascinates with atmospheric detail, however, this novel lacks the artfully maintained suspense of Mantel's previous work. It is the rich background that sustains interest rather than the giant and his nemesis, both of whom remain shadowy figures.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins Pb (June 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857028864
• ISBN-13: 978-1857028867
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Hilary Mantel is the author of nine previous novels, including A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, and Eight Months on Ghazzah Street. She has also written a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Winner of the Hawthornden Prize, she reviews for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. She lives in England.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book strange and bleak, but fascinating and unique., December 3, 1998

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Giant, O'Brien (Hardcover)

Hilary Mantel often includes the theme of exploitation in her novels, but nowhere is it as prominent as it is in The Giant, O'Brien. Set in the 18th century, it is the story of the naïve Irish giant Charles O'Brien, who, poverty-stricken, allows himself to be taken to London where he will be a "freak" for the amusement of the public. Everyone wants to profit from him, from his Irish friends who accompany him, to the agent who contracts with him and the people who house him. Amiably, he tells tales on his travels to amuse his companions, all paralleling in some way the freakishness of his own life and all ending badly: a proud woman's beautiful child is taken and a "yellow child, its skin flapping, its eyes running and its nose snuffling" is substituted; the seven dwarves are beaten to death, "each dwarf watching the pulping of his brother" while "Snow White" is punched in the face, spat at, and driven from the cottage by fire; a pig-faced girl, instead of being rescued by the love of a prince, lives a long life of loneliness. Sensitive and creative, the Giant is a marked contrast to Dr. John Hunter, a "scientist" who collects bones, does research on diseases, and even accidentally inoculates himself with syphilis, allowing him to study it more closely. Hunter's goal is to acquire the bones of the Giant. As both the Giant and Hunter become more ill with the progress of their diseases, the book reaches its climax, leaving the reader to ponder many of the conflicts Mantel has illustrated-creativity vs. scientific research, naivete vs. knowledge, hope vs. despair, charity vs. exploitation-and ultimately, the big question: in what ways, if any, have humans risen above the level of animals.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and subtle themes woven into a tale of woe, March 16, 2008

By 

C. B Collins Jr. (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel (Paperback)

There is much food for thought in this odd yet entertaining dark short book. Hilary Mantel tells the story of Charles O'Brien, an Irish giant, who comes to London to make a living as a 'freak' or sideshow exhibit. He is accompanied by crude Irish ruffians and a villainous agent, Joe Vance. The story of the Irish giant runs parallel to the story of the Scottish surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter.

The novel can be interpreted in many ways, attesting to the superb talent of Hilary Mantel. The lives of Giant Charles O'Brien and Scottish surgeon John Hunter have some striking similarities. Whereas O'Brien sees the vast poverty, social deterioration and economic oppression of the Irish people by the English; John Hunter is no stranger to tragedy as the youngest of 12 children he is always fed last and eventually thrives as a wild child in the Scottish countryside. Here he learns from nature but also is devoid of human sentiment and compassion. He watches as almost all of his siblings die until he, his older brother, and older sister are all that remain. He has seen much death and is well acquainted with death. The giant begins to grow signaling his death while John Hunter begins to deteriorate from a sexually transmitted disease that infected him accidentally when he was trying to infect a homeless man so that Hunter could watch the natural progression of the disease in this homeless fellow. John Hunter desires the skeleton of the giant and pursues him. John Hunter buys corpses. The chapter where he lectures grave robbers on how to rob a grave is creepy and interesting. Hunter now tracks the giant who believes that his body must remain intact if he expects to go to heaven on judgment day. This is the basic armature of the book, but it really is much more than just this.

First, Mantel develops a clever comparison to the life of Jesus in her novel. O'Brien gathers disciples around him, many of whom are scruffy and criminal. Like Jesus, he approaches the downtrodden and asks them to join him. In Ireland he rocks a starving boy until his last breath while telling his mother that the boy is the inheritor of kings and will sit on a throne. After the boy's death, he asks the starving woman to join his group on the way to London. Later his group has their own Mary Magdalene in the person of Bitch Mary, the twelve year old prostitute. He provides fables and tales to entertain and instruct his wayward disciples, inflicted with naive youth, mental retardation, and criminal intent. As Jesus enters Jerusalem to preach his message and then to die, so too does Charles O'Brien enter London to tell stories, make a living as a sideshow freak, and eventually to die. Like Jesus, the disciples disappoint and eventually betray him, willing to sale his bones for cash even though they know the giant feared this would mean he can't go to heaven on judgment day.

The fables told by the giant are odd and haunting and are wonderfully integrated into the short novel. One is a story of a beautiful young mother who nurses a demon baby and loses her own healthy human baby; another is an odd tale of Snow White sleeping with the 7 dwarves until they are killed by suspicious villagers; a third is the tale of pig faced girl who isolates herself from cruel human society the older she becomes. They all end badly, they all emphasize either exploitation of the innocent or man's inhumanity to man.

Much of the novel revolves around human cruelty to other humans. This novel perfectly exemplifies the concept that man is prey to man. There is structural exploitation, which is seen in the relationship of Ireland to England and the vast amount of capital punishment that occurs to the Irish poor for stealing food for their starving children and other 'crimes' that the socially and economically oppressed commit in order to survive. One interesting passage is a list of all the young men and women that the giant knows who were hung by the English for a vast range of petty offenses. Irish women are called `bitch' by the English. Thus the young 12 year old prostitute, Mary, becomes known as Bitch Mary. Thus vast structural oppression occurs in this novel. However, the squalor of everyday oppression of master to servant; landlord to renter; criminal to victim; and pimp to prostitute is evident throughout this dark little novel.

Underneath all the social commentary, the poverty, and man's inhumanity to man is a subtle and well developed theme. For Charles O'Brien is a man who spins myth. He is almost a walking myth himself. He instructs with tales of woe and calamity yet underneath the woe is a spirit of generosity and compassion and a belief in the power of the well-told tale. O'Brien is contrasted with John Hunter, a man who is obsessed with heartless inquiry. He buys corpses and studies anatomy endlessly. Yet his aim in not for the betterment of the human condition, but primarily for his own unquenched desire for knowledge. He may practice surgery but primarily for his own intellectual gratification rather than for the relief of suffering. So, at first sight, it appears that this is a novel about myth versus science; fable versus inquiry; sentiment versus objectivity; emotion versus reason. It is to Hilary Mantel's credit that the novel is not that obvious. For in the end, the squalor and depravity of the human condition bring down both Charles O'Brien and John Hunter. Both are betrayed by trusted servants; both are betrayed by their own bodies; both are eventually betrayed by the limitations of human existence. It is this haunting bleak reality that is Mantel's message. For in the end the human capacity for greed and evil drowns both myth making and science making.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of the Artist as an Irish Giant, September 26, 2000

By 

Rob Anderson - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Giant, O'Brien (Hardcover)

The Giant, O'Brien is a testament to the diversity of Mantel's gifts as a writer--it is both not as psychologically rich and much more earthy than many of her other works (A Change of Climate, An Experiment in Love, Eight Months on Ghazza Street), but it is no less compelling. The novel follows Charles O'Brien, out of Ireland into the streets of late 18th c. London to escape poverty, giving us a stark image of the time and place: many characters cannot recognize stairs because they have never seen a house big enough to warrant them. The Giant O'Brien himself is an island of humanity in a sea of crass and self-serving petty people, the real monstrous freaks of the novel, who live off him--and his corpse.

It is also a richly symbolic account of the storyteller: the imaginative vision of his surroundings (he sees his starving compatriots as "the sons and daughters of gods and kings") which is the source of his art as well as the lines of influence--as the giant tells stories and leads his troupe to become tellers in their own rights. What is more, Mantel's account of the giant's adaptation of the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs tale is stunning--the violence in the tale is not only consistent with traditional tellings of fairy tales, but it clearly emerges out of the world in which it is told.

The fragmented narrative is consistent with other Mantel novels, but it seems more fragmented here, and this makes for challenging reading, but it says so much about the world of late 18th century Ireland and the streets of London. The novel confronts the harshness of its world--abject poverty in Ireland, expoitative London--and the violence it fosters is compelling. Mantel's picture of the plight of poor Irish women is especially disturbing but it reverberates with a powerful truth.