Hilary Mantel

A brilliant – and rather transgressive – collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Including a new story The School of English.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Jane Carr

Stories

Edward

Each of these stories is at least diverting, capturing something interesting or crystallising good observations, and a few are excellent, the first and last particularly. Several have splendid punchlines, tricking you into laughing at a joke you didn't know you were being told. It's certainly interesting to pick out recurring themes and motifs, especially given the stories were not written as a collection. However, I don't feel that the short story gives Mantel the room she needs to truly shine.

In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Her classic wicked humor in each story--which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture--brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Mantel brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage, class, family, and sex, cutting to the core of human experience. Unpredictable, diverse, and even shockingly unexpected, each story grabs you by the throat within a couple of sentences. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.

and other stories

The assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Rose Stanley

Is "liked" the right way to describe my reaction to this collection of macabre but well-written short stories? Nearly all of them have some kind of sordid aspect (even the vampires one, which I think was my fave) but it never feels gratuitous. I still prefer the Wolf Hall trilogy but would def reread these.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

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