Must Read Autobiographies - XXI

Giving Up The Ghost

Hillary Mantel

Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, is an English writer, who has twice been awarded the Booker prize

 Among the book's themes are ghosts and illness, both of which Mantel has much experience with. She elaborates on her earliest years, and then on medical treatments in her 20s. 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.

Namaste

Prabir

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