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‘“Fludd” is a funny, exquisitely written story of priests and nuns in fifties England, but it is also a questioning, intellectual book that applies a profound thoughtfulness to various abtruse areas of religious (or supernatural) belief … A faultless comic masterpiece.’ Literary Review
‘Good morality tales are unusual; but rarer still are books that genuinely make you laugh out loud.’ Spectator
‘Hilary Mantel brings together the miraculous and mundane, the dreadful and the ridiculous in a novel of imagination and skill.’ Financial Times
‘In “Fludd”, Mantel draws on her own imagination, inventing a dark universe which works to laws of her own making. The effect is dazzling, and establishes her in the front ranks of novelists writing in English today.’ Guardian
‘An excellent and ambitious novel.’ Sunday Times
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‘Fludd’ is a dark fable of lost faith, mysterious omens and awakening love set among the priests and nuns of a surreal English town deep in the northern moors.
Fetherhoughton is a drab, dreary town somewhere in a magical, half-real 1950s north England, a preserve of ignorance and superstition protected against the advance of reason by its impenetrable moor-fogs. Father Angwin, the town’s cynical priest, has lost his faith, and wants nothing more than to be left alone. Sister Philomena strains against the monotony of convent life and the pettiness of her fellow nuns. The rest of the town goes about their lives in a haze, a never-ending procession of grim, grey days stretching ahead of them.
Yet all of that is about to change. A strange visitor appears one stormy night, bringing with him the hint, the taste of something entirely new, something unknown. But who is Fludd? An angel come to shake the Fetherhoughtonians from their stupor, to reawaken Father Angwin’s faith, to show Philomena the nature of love? Or is he the devil himself, a shadowy wanderer of the darkest places in the human heart?
Full of dry wit, compassionate characterisations and cutting insight, Fludd is a brilliant gem of a book, and one of Hilary Mantel’s most original works.
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The engaging aspect of this story is that the reader never understands the nature of the being called Fludd, a mystery also grazing Angwin's perception during his first meal with Fludd, when the former observed:
"Whenever (he) looked up at (Fludd), it seemed that his whiskey glass was raised to his lips, but the level of what was in it did not seem to go down; and yet from time to time the young man reached out for the bottle, and topped himself up. It had been the same with their late dinner, there were three sausages on Father Fludd's plate, and he was always cutting into one or other, and spearing a bit on his fork; he was always chewing in an unobtrusive, polite way, with his mouth shut tight. And yet there were always three sausages on his plate, until at last, quite suddenly, there were none."
Is Fludd a man, or something else. He can tell fortunes by looking at the palm of one's hand. He alludes to having once been the practitioner of another profession that sounds a lot like alchemy. Odd talents for a Catholic priest. In any case, by the satisfying end of the tale, you, the reader, is left to decide for yourself - if you can.
The nuns are equally bound up in their fierce world - it seems hard to imagine any of the characters could be effectual enough to bring anything about. Yet things do mysteriously happen when Fludd appears - taken for the young curate the bishop has threatened. His ingratiating ways not only bring him acceptance on all fronts but set him up to act as a catalyst to wreak havoc!
As much of the arguments are fought on ecclesiastical terms (often obscure) and the goings-on of a super-natural nature, it is not always easy to say exactly what is happening or why. There is certainly an other-worldly feel to proceedings.
However, the book is enormously intelligent and enormously funny. And that is all you really need to know!
Mantel's cleverly absorbing novel centres on the sheltered community's... Read more
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