Giving up the Ghost: A memoir
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Giving up the Ghost: A memoir for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Edwina Currie, Mail on Sunday Books of the Year 2003
'I loved Hilary Mantel's autobiography. Mantel has a sharp eye for the ridiculous and an elegant, direct style.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Susan Sontag, TLS Books of the Year 2003
'No book this year has give me more pleasure than Hilary Mantel's astonishing, ravishing memoir, Giving up the Ghost.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
71 of 72 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have a particular interest in this story because, weirdly, I also have hypothyroidism and endometriosis, and wanted to find out more about this commonly misdiagnosed illness. But I'm also a huge fan of Mantel's highly varied fiction, and was curious to find out where it came from.
In one sense this is a familiar tale about a girl from the Northern mill-town who escapes poverty and hopelessness through a good education at grammar school. Many other British women authors, from Margaret Drabble to Margaret Forster have told it. Mantel's childhood, her apprehension of the Devil (she was raised a Catholic)her fatherlessness and confusion are described in all their black comedy and raw pain. However, the story goes off in an unexpected direction because of Mantel's illness, which colours her time in Africa and Saudi Arabia, her marriage and inevitably her choice of career. Some people are going to like it simply because of its frank account of what it feels like to go from being a size 10 to a size 20 (Yes: it sucks) and as one anxiously waiting to see if the effects can be reversed I'd like more on that... But what it also does is make you very angry on behalf of someone who, despite her formidable intelligence, was advised to become a librarian not a lawyer, and who was medicated as psychologically disturbed when she had a physical illness which rendered her infertile. It made me admire her work even more, knowing the conditions in which it must have been composed.
In one sense this is a familiar tale about a girl from the Northern mill-town who escapes poverty and hopelessness through a good education at grammar school. Many other British women authors, from Margaret Drabble to Margaret Forster have told it. Mantel's childhood, her apprehension of the Devil (she was raised a Catholic)her fatherlessness and confusion are described in all their black comedy and raw pain. However, the story goes off in an unexpected direction because of Mantel's illness, which colours her time in Africa and Saudi Arabia, her marriage and inevitably her choice of career. Some people are going to like it simply because of its frank account of what it feels like to go from being a size 10 to a size 20 (Yes: it sucks) and as one anxiously waiting to see if the effects can be reversed I'd like more on that... But what it also does is make you very angry on behalf of someone who, despite her formidable intelligence, was advised to become a librarian not a lawyer, and who was medicated as psychologically disturbed when she had a physical illness which rendered her infertile. It made me admire her work even more, knowing the conditions in which it must have been composed.
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Any autobiography written by a novelist whose literary craft and imaginative eye appeals to you, will be looked forward to and savoured, since the reader must hope that whatever the writer's life has been like, he or she will bring to bear their fine sense of observation and interpretation onto themselves. The best autobiography won't be just a catalogue of events, but will illustrate something universal. Hilary Mantel does not disappoint!
This is marvellous. She takes the stuff of ordinary beginnings, and of course illustrates how extraordinary we all are, how precious and unique, how our history and memories shape and mould us. I also found her accounts of how her own ill health has had profound effects on her perception of herself extremely moving (side effects of medications which changed her whole physical identity) She chooses to take 'snapshots' of various facets of her life, and expands them into something almost approaching meditations.
A wonderful book!
56 of 59 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It is almost impossible to convey the emotional impact of this memoir. At times it is almost too painful to realise the wrong done to Mantel by the medical profession over several decades, but it is the mark of a writer of depth, intelligence, insight and wit that she has turned such appalling experience into intensely moving prose that is little short of miraculous. But then Mantel is a miraculous writer. If you haven't read her fiction you have a rare treat in store, and if you have you will have fallen upon her memoir eager to discover something about the razor sharp intellect behind such astonishing and varied story-telling. Every woman should read GIVING UP THE GHOST, as should every writer, every doctor, every student of human nature. Everyone, in fact. I defy anyone to remain unmoved by it.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
A beautifully written account of a life destroyed by endometriosis, moreover a life adversely affected by the chauvinistic attitude of the medical profession towards women's... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Endocarer
Interesting and thoughtful
I have quite a weakness for autobiographies, especially those by fluent writers becaue, in their hands, an almost ordinary life can become very interesting purely through the way... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Alison McVey
What is not written leaves me wanting
I am new to Hilary Mantel, still struggling through Wolf Hall and stopped to read this. I found the first 38 pages dull until she talked about her real father. Read more
Published on 19 April 2010 by P. Bird
Giving up the Ghost
Sorry to say but this was one of the hardest book I've ever read!
I felt it really drag and I just did not find it to be a good read. Read more
I felt it really drag and I just did not find it to be a good read. Read more
Published on 30 Mar 2010 by Ms. D. A. Reid
interesting, especially if you are a child born in the 1950s
I did enjoy this book. Probably because it was evocative of my own childhood in the 50s. I liked the scenes of family life at the start of the book, the simple detail of everyday... Read more
Published on 29 Nov 2009 by L. Bretherton
Still waiting ......
I read this book waiting for something to happen but nothing did. Sounds an average childhood for a kid these days. I felt I had a more interesting childhood! Read more
Published on 26 Oct 2004 by jonah
Prize-winning autobiography: Mind 'book of the year' 2004
A victim of both medical disinterest and just-not-good-enough parenting, Hilary Mantel has attempted to exorcise the ghosts of her harrowing childhood in true Cixousian fashion by... Read more
Published on 18 July 2004 by P. Wilkin
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
