Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir (Hardcover)

by Hilary Mantel (Author) "It is a Saturday, late July 2000; we are in Reepham, Norfolk, at Owl Cottage..." (more)
Key Phrases: Top Nun, Annie Connor, Owl Cottage (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
As she approaches midlife, Mantel applies her beautiful prose and expansive vocabulary to a somewhat meandering memoir. The English author of eight novels (The Giant, O'Brien; Eight Months on Ghazzah Street; etc.) is "writing in order to take charge of the story of my childhood and my childlessness; and in order to locate myself... between the lines where the ghosts of meaning are." Among the book's themes are ghosts and illness, both of which Mantel has much experience with. She expends many pages on her earliest years, and then on medical treatments in her 20s, but skips other decades almost entirely as she brings readers up to the present. At age seven she senses a horrifying creature in the garden, which as a Catholic she concludes is the devil; later, houses she lives in have "minor poltergeists." The first and foremost ghost, though, is the baby she will never have. By 20, Mantel is in constant pain from endometriosis, and at 27, after years of misdiagnosis and botched treatment, she has an operation that ends her fertility. Her pains come back, she has thyroid problems and drug treatments cause her body to balloon; she describes these ordeals with remarkably wry detachment. Fans of Mantel's critically acclaimed novels may enjoy the memoir as insight into her world. Often, though, all the fine detail that in another work would flesh out a plot-such as embroidery silk "the scarlet shade of the tip of butterflies' wings"-has nowhere to go.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
This bleak memoir by a prolific British novelist recounts her upbringing in the North of England in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. Mantel's domineering stepfather has contempt for her intellectual aspirations and for her constant nausea and migraines. When, at college, she takes her symptoms to a doctor, he prescribes antidepressants and sends her on to a psychiatrist, who, in turn, suggests that she give up her studies to work for her mother selling dresses. Finally, at twenty-seven, she is diagnosed with severe endometriosis. Her uterus is removed, and hormone replacements cause extreme weight gain. For most of her life, she has struggled with emaciation, but strangers increasingly assume she is pregnant, now an impossibility. While Mantel's prose shimmers with suppressed anger, the reader might have preferred a story more plainly shaped, and one that gave some sense of the growth of her remarkable imagination.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (October 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805074724
• ISBN-13: 978-0805074727
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #805,403 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Memoir, February 24, 2006

By	Blue Moon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This is a book to be read and re-read; Hilary Mantel's prose is so spare and sharp that at first glance it conceals the depths that unlie her descriptions of events and people throughout her life. The "ghost" takes many forms; her reactions to them become her life. Although she has led a life of hardships and pain, she tells of times of pleasure and inserts wry and very amusing lines as counterpoints to dark and dramatic moments. Women in particular will understand much of what Mantel has been through both physically and emotionally as she wrestles with disease and doctors. I recommend this highly to anyone who has read and enjoyed Mantel's novels.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another great book, July 3, 2004

By	Emilie Gruchow (New York City, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a hard book to comment on, as it is both excellent and incomplete. As all memoirs- to an extent- probably feel somewhat unfinished, "Giving Up the Ghost," is particularly hard to reflect on with any sense of conclusion. Whether this adds to or detracts from the book's strength changes from day to day after reading it, but the work, and its content, does keep you thinking for a long time afterwards.

It seems that, with the exception of "A Place of Greater Safety," this is a quality shared by her earlier fictional works and, here, her non-fiction. In a few cases, as in "An Experiment in Love," the ending feels abrupt rather than simply inconclusive. This is preceded by a good 200-odd pages of bulldozer honesty, however, and the force of the revelations are only never quite relieved. Her shorter books read most of the way through as if you are being pushed blindly towards a cliff, and are only pushed off in the last few pages. The final paragraphs, then, which seam up an ending, feel like the thoughts you are having on the way down. In theory, the novel would be incomplete, but while they don't feel settled, you never exactly complain that you haven't reached the bottom yet.

"Ghost" is more gradual, even measured. Her insights are both condemning and self-questioning, and the most beautiful writing finds itself where she returns to previous conclusions and reevaluates them. I am probably stupidly young to be applying a critical view to the majority of the book's described experience, but Mantel creates a familiarity with her characters, and herself, that is at once both painful and comforting in its imperfection. Any perceived fault in her writing is never in character development or settling you into their place, but in adhering to the arc defined as "fiction making sense". She seems to stick to a disarming incoherence, which follows and develops with each novel. If her shorter works feel incomplete in themselves, there is continuity between them as a whole. There are great truths, but nothing didactic upon which to hang an definitely instructive ending. This is true in "Ghost," where she gives an honest experience that cannot be constructed into a moral, so there is none made of it. What we do want at the end, though, is a connection between the experiences she presents us with. In "A Place of Greater Safety," the length allowed for a thorough examination of the incongruities within and between characters, which gives a shape to the irresolution. I recommend buying "Ghost", simply because it is a great book, but I found myself here again wishing Mantel's work had been longer.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating glimpse into the life of a great contemporary writer, September 1, 2007

By	Penny (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Up the Ghost : A Memoir (John MacRae Books) (Paperback)

I love the way Hilary Mantel writes. Her imagery and descriptions are so true, so evocative, sometimes I need to put on a sweater or snuggle deeper into the duvet just to cope. She strings me out and keeps me roped in. I have no other way of expressing just how fine her writing feels to me. When I'm reading her work, I feel that she has tapped into the great reservoir--the man-made basin brimming with pain and suffering, dreams and devils. This book is haunting and grim--yet one identifies so strongly with the author, risk and all.