A Memoir of My Former Self
A Life in Writing
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- £14.99
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
'A guide to the mind of one of the great English novelists of the last half-century' Guardian
'Like hearing the voice of an old friend' Observer
'Extraordinary . . . a quality of timelessness and prescience' New Statesman, Book of the Year
'Magical . . . Here we meet not just Mantel the Cromwell-catcher, but Mantel the quill-sharp critic of contemporary life' The Times, Book of the Year
THE MAGNIFICENT FINAL BOOK FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE WOLF HALL TRILOGY
As well as her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. This strand of her writing was an integral part of how she thought of herself. 'Ink is a generative fluid,' she explains. 'If you don't mean your words to breed consequences, don't write at all.' A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.
Mantel's subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels - revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England - and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V. S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia. Here, too, is a selection of her film reviews - from When Harry Met Sally to RoboCop - and, published for the first time, her stunning Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life.
From her unique childhood to her all-consuming fascination with Thomas Cromwell that grew into the Wolf Hall Trilogy, A Memoir of My Former Self reveals the shape of Hilary Mantel's life in her own dazzling words, 'messages from people I used to be.' Compelling, often very funny, always luminous, it is essential reading from one of our greatest writers.
'A smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature' Margaret Atwood
'Mantel was a queen of literature . . . her reign was long, varied and uncontested' Maggie O'Farrell
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this dazzling posthumous collection of previously published and original writings, novelist Mantel (1952–2022; Wolf Hall) submits herself to the "constant state of self-questioning" she deems characteristic of any worthwhile history or fiction. Divided into five sections and dated with timestamps spanning from 1987 to 2018, these pieces see Mantel interrogating her primary genre ("The task of historical fiction is to take the past out of the archive and relocate it in the body"); casting a sharp critical eye on films from RoboCop to When Harry Met Sally ("People sometimes like to have their intimate dilemmas presented to them in terms that are slick and witty and bittersweet instead of just bitter"); analyzing the works of women authors ("Everything in work attests to a long practice of keen observation, a hoarding of images and facts"); detailing transformative moments from her own life ("This is the day I met my stepfather. I am four now. My head is slightly too big for my body. The inside of it is bulging with knowledge"); and providing a window into her writing process, through which she attempted to achieve a "relationship with language that is clean, unflawed." Mantel's idiosyncratic and magisterial voice comes through on every page, carrying readers across an astonishing array of subject matter with ease. This is a treasure.
