Any reader who has inhabited Hilary Mantel’s carefully reconstructed fictional worlds must have wondered: what made this brilliant woman tick? The first woman to win the Booker Prize twice, she made history come alive and built a formidable literary legacy.
It’s been two years since Mantel’s untimely passing in September 2022, just before she finished writing her feminist novel on the world of Pride and Prejudice. Like all her historical novels, it would have made for a gripping read.
Her life and travels
Mantel’s A Memoir of My Former Self. A Life in Writing is a collection of non-fiction, essays, journalism and reviews published posthumously late last year. It is a collection of works that shed light on her influences, sharp wit and sense of the other developed through her life and travels. It is edited by Nicholas Pearson, who worked with Mantel for 20 years including on the Wolf Hall trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII.
In addition to being a celebrated novelist, Mantel was also an accomplished reviewer, essayist and memoir writer who contributed over 50 pieces to the London Review of Books. Her reviews provide insights into what she valued about language and writing itself.
One example is Mantel’s admiration for fellow novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, particularly for Howard’s ‘immaculate construction, impeccable observation [and] persuasive but inexorable technique’. Mantel describes Howard as having both style and tenacity. Her final line in this piece is ‘Standing ovations await the brave’, which could also sum up Mantel’s literary career.
Mantel’s observational powers and sense of the other, or the outsider, were sometimes explored through personal experiences such as her ill health and time spent living overseas.
Essays on personal themes
In essays Written on Our Bodies and Every Part of My Body Hurts, Mantel writes of the challenges of seeking help for endometriosis in the 1970s from mostly male doctors. She describes being ‘offered tranquilisers and anti-depressants and the opportunity of a career as a psychiatric patient, which in the end I found the strength to decline’.
On being an expat
In Last Morning in Al Hamra, Mantel documents the challenges of being an expat living in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, largely confined to her expat community and without the same rights as her husband. She felt ‘stifled, desperate for the open air’. A tentative friendship with a local neighbour reinforced their differences.
Diverse subject matter
Mantel’s subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism, the mythic legacy of Princess Diana and 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. Here, too, is a selection of her film reviews – from When Harry Met Sally to RoboCop – and her Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life.
This collection offers rich insights into the celebrated literary works of Hilary Mantel, her love of language and tips for emerging writers.
Hilary Mantel’s A Memoir of My Former Self. A Life in Writing is published by Hatchette Australia and retails for $24.00. This reviewer’s copy is from Berkelouw Books in Eumundi.
PHOTO of Hilary Mantel at top of story by Els Zweerink
