Man Booker Prize - Hilary Mantel

[tillystar]

Just been looking at the Man Booker shortlist and winner.

There are a few interesting looking books on there:

www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1275

I have never heard of the winner Hilary Mantel and after reading about her and her books I am really interested to read both her winning book Wolf Hall and also Eight Months on Ghazzah Street looks interesting too.

Has anyone read anything by her?

[bixaorellana]

I read Every Day Is Mother's Day and on the strength of that, started The Giant, O'Brien, which I abandoned.

Probably I'm an intellectual lightweight, but I find her writing more self-indulgent than ground-breaking, with the patches of incisiveness overwhelmed by the piling on of different ways of saying what she's already said.

The ... Mother's Day book is much more straight narrative, so reading it first gives an incomplete, even untrue view of her writing.

[Deleted]

I don't know Mantel's work. Will keep my eyes peeled. I do see A.S. Byatt's new novel ,'The Children's Book' is on the short list. I have been anxiously awaiting this for some time. I am a huge fan of hers. A very interesting woman.

[patricklondon]

I'm reading Simon Mawer's The Glass Room. It's treading fairly well-worn ground, but I'm enjoying it. And it's so much shorter than Wolf Hall, which is enormous.

[Deleted]

Byatt's novel looks to be a quite hefty tome as well. Most of hers are though.
I generally like most of the Man Booker Prize books. Much more so then the other award winning stuff out there.

[lola]

This is the first year I've read a book before it gets nod from Man Booker: Joshua Ferris' To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. The other weird thing is that he's American. This one was a little over my head, philosophically. I preferred his And Then We Came to the End.

[Deleted]

I agree Lola, I found it difficult as well. I will have to give his other novel a try. Thanks.

[lola]

Give Came to the End a shot, casimira. I picked it up while in bad mood, decided I disliked it and almost returned to library, gave it a second chance, ended up liking it a lot.

I tried to read Lost For Words by Edward St Aubyn, the recent novel about the politics behind the Booker Prize, but found the tone too dark for my current needs. It seemed pretty clever, and probably gives an accurate picture of such juries.

[bixaorellana]

There is conversation sprinkled in What is everybody here reading about Mantel and her two Cromwell books. In those conversations I recanted my position in this thread and burbled on enthusiastically about Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Here is a great interview with Hilary Mantel: www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/22/hilary-mantel-ive-got-quite-amused-at-people-saying-i-have-writers-block-ive-been-like-a-factory

And, in answer to Lola's comment above about Edward St. Aubyn ~
I watched the whole Patrick Melrose tv mini-series as I was completely blown away by Benedict Cumberbatch's performance. But because of the distressing details of St. Aubyn's life, upon which the Patrick Melrose novels are based, I wasn't eager to read the books. Nevertheless, upon being offered the first one as an ebook bargain, I did look inside. That's when I discovered that St. Aubyn can really, really write -- writes like a dream, in fact.

[bixaorellana]

With her much anticipated The Mirror and the Light due to be published in a few days, Hilary Mantel is really having a day. Hope this is not paywall-prevented, as it's a good article. She is interesting and people who write will be intrigued by what she says about her writing process. nyti.ms/37UQzc4