Hilary Mantel
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By: Picador
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Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( M ) -> Mantel, Hilary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> British -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
This thoughtful family saga evokes a climate for change. 4 out of 5 stars.
23 of 24 people found this review helpful.
When asked, rhetorically, by his sister, "Whatever happened to the dinosaurs?", Ralph, the main character responds, "Their habitat altered...A change of climate." In his rebellion against his parents, their closed, religiously fundamentalist point of view, and his father's financial blackmailing regarding his career choices, Ralph intentionally changes his physical habitat and his climate by escaping to South Africa with his bride. Working as a lay person at a mission and vigorously opposing apartheid, Ralph and Anna eventually are imprisoned, then banished to Bechuanaland, now Botswana. It is here that the savagery which creates a permanent and terrible climate in their marriage occurs, a savagery not limited to one race as Ralph and Anna had perceived in South Africa.
As the story bounces from the present in England back twenty years to Africa, the reader lives through the vivid and terrible African experiences and simultaneously sees how they have permeated the lives of these good, but often naïve, people. Both Ralph and Anna have rejected the traditional religion of their parents in favor of doing good deeds in their family lives and through a social service trust. But as Ralph's uncle James points out, "There is nothing so appallingly hard...as the business of being human."
While the reader cheers as James grows and eventually embraces life, s/he also fears for Anna, who remains emotionally closed, despite her good deeds, fearful that she "should lose everything, one of these days." As the events resolve themselves and the "competition in goodness" comes to an end, we see real humans trying to put aside the petrified past and to change the climate of their lives, and we will, perhaps, evaluate our own lives. Can we accept change, or are we dinosaurs at heart?
Editorial Review:
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. Thirty years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and thirty years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
