‘Like Lorna Sage's Bad Blood … A masterpiece’ RACHEL CUSK
‘Giving up the Ghost’ is award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel's uniquely unusual five-part autobiography.
Opening in 1995 with 'A Second Home', Mantel describes the death of her stepfather which leaves her deeply troubled by the unresolved events of her childhood. In 'Now Geoffrey Don't Torment Her' Mantel takes the reader into the muffled consciousness of her early childhood, culminating in the birth of a younger brother and the strange candlelight ceremony of her mother's 'churching'. In 'Smile', an account of teenage perplexity, Mantel describes a household where the keeping of secrets has become a way of life. Finally, at the memoir's conclusion, Mantel explains how through a series of medical misunderstandings and neglect she came to be childless and how the ghosts of the unborn like chances missed or pages unturned, have come to haunt her life as a writer.
- ISBN13 9780007142729
- Publish Date 1 June 2004 (first published 5 May 2003)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
- Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 272
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk