Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
READ THIS BOOK, 12 Jun 2003
By A Customer
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.
|
|
|
29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating and moving, 27 April 2005
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.
|
|
|
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clean, deceptively simple writing - but rich food indeed!, 2 Aug 2003
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!
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Hilary Mantel
by Hilary Mantel
by Hilary Mantel
by Hilary Mantel
by Hilary Mantel
