An Experiment in Love

by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel's seventh novel examines the pressures on women during the 1960s to excel--but not be too successful--in England's complex hierarchy of class and status. Pushed by a domineering mother, Carmel McBain climbs her way through the pecking order and ends up at London University as an acquiescent and undernourished teenager, achieving the status so desired by her mother, but too weak to make use of it or pose a threat to anyone. Though this is Carmel's story, it reflects on a generation of girls desiring the power of men, but fearful of abandoning what is expected and proper.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Coming Of Age, British Literature, Novels, Womens

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Hilary Mantel was the bestselling author of many novels including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Wolf Hall Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She also wrote A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, Vacant Possession, and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Anastasia Hobbet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilary Mantel never wastes a word, and it's only at the end of this brief book (as opposed to her Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, at 500-plus pages, anyway)that you realize how expertly she has woven every line and observation. She excels, in all her books, at the portrayal of not-so-likable people, and keeping the reader interested in them even as they're repelled. She said recently, when asked what advice she'd give to aspiring writers: "Drop the charm. Eat meat, drink blood." She means it.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so enchanted by Wolf Hall that I resolved to read Hilary Mantel's other novels. I had not heard of her before Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize and I don't think she was very well-known in the United States previously, but is highly respected in England. She has published ten novels, An Experiment in Love being her seventh.

It is a sad, sad tale, very English and it reminded me of Anne Enright's The Gathering. Somehow, Mantel's writing just drags you into the hearts of her characters and keeps you there feeling all their sufferings, fleeting joys, hopes and confusions, as they move through their lives. It is actually excruciating but that is often just what I want in a novel.

Carmel McBain comes from working class Irish-Catholic parents who settled in one of those mill towns in the Liverpool area (where the Beatles came from.) By the time their only child was born, the town was dying. Both parents worked and scrimped but Carmel's mother, in her own emtionally stunted way, pushed her daughter to aspire for more.

This is a coming-of-age story of Carmel as she leaves her Catholic girlhood, goes to college in the 60s, learns about and lives through sex, love and birth control while she studies and starves on her scholarship grant. It is a familiar plot, this trajectory of a sheltered young woman moving into fuller life in the big wide treacherous world of late 20th century life.

The telling of the tale is what got me. From Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman to Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, we get these stories that are almost the female side of the Holden Caufield thing. And the female experience is more fraught with emotional danger just because we are the second sex.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fine novel for me. The writing and the story telling are so bright and fast-moving I didn't want to put it down.

The tale follows Carmel from her girlhood through a demanding Catholic school for 11-18-years olds, and into her college times in London. There is plenty of flavoring in this this Irish-Catholic background, and in the sense of poverty of pocket book and ideas of some of the characters, in the class issues and and in the sense of the times and places that are vastly different. Different from anything I remember in the same and even earlier time periods, an isolation. There is flavoring also in the wit of the narrator and the personalities of the young women as they come together in a group at the beginning of their college time. (I personally loved the narrator's law school references to cases like Hadley v. Baxendale, which all American contract students must know.) But all that's the flavoring, not the meat, even if the its necessary to the meat.

What is the meat? I'm not telling. But I will say that Mantel can draw your eye to details that provide interest and support the plot and which you might mistake for the main point--like a magician who draws your eye away from the real action. Even the title might be ambiugous when you've finished the book.

I wanted to read more and more, but I'm left to my own resources, and I find myself thinking about the book, even wanting to re-read it, ever since I finished the book last night. The last pages will prompt some thinking and I'll not spoil them. I'm not even going to describe in general terms the direction of the plot. Read it.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming of age story set in England in the 1960s-1970s told by protagonist Carmel, a girl from a poor family. At the urging of her mother, she earns an opportunity to apply for a Catholic girls’ school, which puts her on the road to university in London. It is told by an older Carmel looking back on her experiences as a youth and young woman. She has known Karina from an early age, and Karina gains the same educational opportunities; however, they are more competitors than friends. At university in London, Karina rooms with Lynette, and Carmel with Julianne. The storyline follows the interactions among these characters, as they deal with money matters, eating disorders, friendships, rivalries, relationships, and politics.

The early parts of this book are slow in developing. The narrative moves back and forth among the school experiences – primary, secondary, and university. It builds to a dramatic, unexpected, and disquieting ending. It is focused on the personality traits of the characters, and they are well-drawn. The writing is strong. Themes include class differences, the challenges faced by women of the era, and body image. It kept my attention, but I much prefer Hilary Mantel’s historical fiction.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really sure what to make of this… I really enjoyed many elements but finished feeling something was lacking.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review could be 20 paragraphs long, that's how personal a connection this novel had for me in reaction. More than just enjoyable, at least 1/2 was outright LOL The descriptive mastery! Not an easy read, as there are 4 comparative context metaphors or some kind of nuance allusion or allegory to a paragraph, but what an effect! Also despite being in another country, the absolutely identical cultural context issues to the time we experienced are just incredible. Like the paper folded contraptions, for example, we played games with what she calls "quackers". We did the identical same on another continent. We folded them and worked them like beaks too, used them to tell our fortunes, like a Magic 8 Ball, some of you may remember. There was a fad for them that lingered for 2 or 3 years, just about as long as the hula hoop. Boys made them too.

Hilary Mantel, IMHO, is the best Boomer generation female writer in that art of putting people into their core cultural context almost instantly. She is a genius. Not just with words, but within the memory of all 5 senses that she can relate per sentence. As she details within this book, when she is writing about herself that her past memory feels of fluffed fur more than any visual picture reel as in a movie. It's coming from all directions. Like the wool smell of wet uniforms, the chalk dust mixed with baloney sandwich meat aroma. So many more here. And remembering the real shock when the 3 outfits you owned were all mini's and within a 1/2 year the mini's were out and you looked like a cartoon character if you tried to wear one within a room of 50 other girls in Midi's who also held "5-6-9 Shop" credit cards that you certainly didn't.

Our "Sophy's" had another name. We used to call them "the Canadians" so that no one knew who we were talking about. We didn't live in a welfare state though as Carmel does in this novel. So no school lunches, you ate what you carried in with you too, even if you were there for 15 hours straight. We had no gym and our exercise was getting there. (2 buses and a mile walk both before and after the boarding each way). In winter, we left in the dark and got home in the dark. Blizzards, still not allowed to wear pants either. I still know how to ride on the bottom step of the back door of a CTA bus. It was my "place". We were all skinny, but not as skinny as Carmel in this novel. That is where we differ the most. My family didn't own a car. The 17 year old "Sophy's" in my time drove their own. The same class and economic issues, precisely.

And the contraceptive stories were nearly identical with this novel, but you needed to find your own doctor. None supplied. Regardless, we had a nun in Sophomore Year who illustrated sexual coitus in great detail on a blackboard so that no one could plead ignorance. Hilary would laugh. Many then and now still take the Sue (in the book) route, it seems, regardless.

Hilary Mantel's description of what love is when she first hears Lynette's voice is one of the best I have ever come across. And it didn't take 3 tomes to get there either. Her fellowship between women quotient is just out of the stratosphere. Top tier writer- absolutely gifted and practiced.

Here's to all of us, all we good Catholic girls everywhere who learned to love our Katrinas. And God too.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing in this short book captured and held me, even though the plot had little intrinsic interest for me. It's the experience of a working-class Catholic girl from the north of England being pushed into academic success by her ambitious mother in the late 1960s to 1970. It's a somber and sad first-person story, even though the narrator has reached, by the time of the writing, some form of happiness, integrity, and maturity. There are flashes everywhere of early feminism, social satire, Catholic religiosity, and political commentary. It's clear early on that the narrator's mysterious and lumpish friend Karina, who has unpleasantly shadowed her life since she was a little girl, is going to do something hostile and violent; but when the act finally comes, it is still a surprise, as are the narrator's responses to it. I have not seen anyone try to explain the significance of the book's title, which is tantalizingly ambiguous. There is very little of what is usually thought of as love in the novel, but much about loyalty and obligation in spite of mutual dislike, suspicion, and even hatred. A fascinating book. I enjoyed Wolf Hall, and I have Mantel's long novel set during the French revolution on my shelf. I plan to tackle it soon.

[WndyJW · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so pleased to find on my shelves a Hilary Mantel book that I hadn’t read. I thought I had read them all. As expected this was a solid 5 star. Fully realized, knowable, memorable characters, a sense of time and place, smart writing, and Dame Mantel’s signature dark humor.

[Hester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's how to write . Semi Autobiography but with the finesse of someone who understands how the garment of a novel is made . It's not enough to take a thread or two and wind it out . Here we have several pieces that combine to reveal the whole only at the end . And shows how the fabric isn't really fit for purpose , being cut by someone who intended trousers not a blouse .

I'm of a similar generation and , happily, sidestepped the Hall of Residence model for a new self catering flat in a mixed block. This novel helps me understand I made a good decision.

Two girls grow up , both only children , in a poor Northern textile town in the fifties and sixties . Our narrator , Carmel , has an ambitious mother and a disengaged father so is subject to a sort of " bettering yourself " tyranny via status and education . Her mother controls her completely , her hair is contorted nightly into ringlets like a Medusa . She must do nothing but study . Karina is the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe and the family survival mode is trust no one and use guile . Karina learns to keep house and take care of her basic needs without guilt . They are early paired by their mothers and go through school in an uneasy friendship that blooms to dislike and a sour competitiveness..

Emerging from a convent secondary, where they have been groomed to self sacrifice, penitence and marriage , and where contact with boys is taboo, London and university should offer whole vistas of opportunity . But both cling to their past in different ways . Food and homecraft centre remains stage and act as a focus for self denial or comfort . Despite the liberations of contraception there is a huge void in understanding men and the hall of residence offers as much adult guidance as a prisoner of war camp . Food is inedible and rationed . Caught between freedom and compliance the two girls are ill equipped to navigate the challenges they face . Their much sought and valued education has prepared them , lambs to the slaughter , to sacrifice themselves to study and work or to finding a husband . It's medieval. Compelling read with a symbolic ending .

[Gabril · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Dicono che si è giovani una volta sola, ma non lo siamo a lungo? Più a lungo di quanto si riesca a sopportare.”

Intenso romanzo di formazione che, con la voce narrante di Carmel McBain, racconta le vicissitudini di un gruppo di ragazze, appartenenti a classi sociali differenti, che si trovano insieme all’università di Londra a sperimentare un passaggio culturale che ha segnato un’epoca: quegli anni Settanta che hanno visto d’un tratto sgretolarsi un mondo patriarcale e bigotto per aprirsi a un altro possibile mondo, fervido di promesse, tutte molto difficili da mantenere. Come il tempo avrebbe poi dimostrato.

La memoria di Carmel adulta torna ai difficili anni dell’infanzia e della prima adolescenza quando, in un remoto paese del Lancashire, lei, figlia di famiglia cattolica operaia, e Karina, figlia di oscuri immigrati dell’est Europa, cercano di farsi spazio a scuola, spronate da madri bramose di riscatto, per conquistarsi quel posto che i genitori non hanno mai avuto dentro una società in evidente rapida evoluzione.
Non c’è un reale rapporto di amicizia fra le due bambine, piuttosto una sorda rivalità, un confronto costante e sempre impari. Una relazione complessa di amore/odio che continuerà anche quando entrambe riusciranno ad accedere al prestigioso istituto cattolico del Santissimo Redentore, schivando così il rischio di una vita che cammina sul binario prestabilito dalle convenzioni sociali. Dove una donna rimane assoggettata: casalinga, massaia, moglie, madre e nulla più.

A maggior ragione l’esperienza universitaria sarà ricca di esperienze e di contraddizioni. Dove vedremo ragazze intelligenti che combattono per la propria emancipazione, e studiano con risultati brillanti, rimanere impastoiate nei consueti ruoli di sudditanza, dentro relazioni con mediocri coetanei. Ragazze che desiderano contemporaneamente la libertà sessuale e la maternità precoce, il potere politico e il focolare domestico.
Anche i loro rapporti sono contraddittori, segnati dalle differenze di classe e dalle reciproche gelosie. A dimostrazione che la solidarietà femminile, la sorellanza tanto sbandierata dal primo femminismo è una faticosa conquista e non è data una volta per tutte.
Persino l’accesso agli studi superiori è vincolato all’adesione a un modello maschile preconfezionato.
“Le donne erano obbligate a scimmiottare gli uomini e destinate a non riuscirvi”.
E così “le nostre scuole ci preservavano, finché era possibile, dalla pericolosa, dirompente, traumatica comprensione della natura femminile.”

Mantel scrive un romanzo lucido e doloroso, asciutto e disincantato, dove la ricerca di sé e dell’amore è un percorso iniziatico che si compie come un salto nel vuoto verso l’incognita insita nei tempi nuovi e accettando il rischio della perdita e dell’annientamento.
Un romanzo realistico, duro e necessario, con un finale degno di un dramma shakespeariano.

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am, to be completely honest, in awe of Mantel's writing. She has a very specific and recognisable voice which is not quite like anyone else's. This book is no exception and is a joy to read, and insightful into the experience of women in the 1960s and 70s in Britain. So a full 5 stars for the writing which is magnificent at times. I was though a little dissapointed with the story, or not even the story but the way it ended. Most of the time the story is engaging, insightful, amusing, a little shocking, but it ended rather too abruptly for me. Still, as with everything else I have read by Mantel, worth reading.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is often compared to Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means, including by the characters in the book itself!!! But, while there are structural and thematic similarities: a narrator form "the now" recalls her younger self living in a residence hall for young women, a tragedy that takes the life of one of said women, etc., I find Mantel's book to be much better. It is less fragmented in its points of view (Carmel is the sole narrator), Carmel has a back story that is much more developed and poignant (heart-breaking really). There is a very interesting three way friendship/frenemship? between Carmel, her childhood friend Karina (an uncouth child of immigrants from an unspecified European country) and her high-school friend Julia(nne) (a sophisticated doctor's daughter). Carmel's descent into anorexia is not easily explained, the relationships between the various girls are complex. The "now" point of view, though very limited, hints that these young women were shaped by the events from the past (Julia, previously Julianne, is now a psychologist? doctor? treating anorexia, Carmel has married, but there is no mention of children). A well-written, complicated novel, IMHO superior to THe Girls of Slender Means.

[Dillwynia Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

England in the 1960s could be grim, particularly if you were poor and / or Catholic. Carmel is both. After scoring a scholarship, Carmel manages to get a place at University College, and this is a novel about the women who managed to get into university and what was expected. The novel covers family expectations, being away from the strictures of school, and personal expectations and wants, and early feminism. It's a very honest novel and pulls no punches of the conflicting desires and wants of these women, the callous behaviour of young men towards women in university, and trying to please everyone, and not yourself.
This forgotten gem is definitely worth a look.

[Mary Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. The restrictive school setting, brief poignant character sketches, and conclusion all remind me more than a little of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The distance the narrator is able to maintain between herself and her childhood friend/acquaintance/enemy, Karina, is remarkable, and we don't see until the ending exactly why this distance is so necessary, because the narrator can't bring herself to spell it out. Karina's streak of malevolence is more than a little destructive. Hilary Mantel is my new favorite author.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘An Experiment in Love’ is a novel that I expected to connect with more than in fact I did. It follows a girl called Carmel as she gets into a selective high school, has to have a whole fancy uniform that seems incredibly expensive, does well at school, goes off to university, and negotiates the novel freedom of living with a group of other young women for the first time. Although the narrative is set in the 1970s, I had all the aforementioned experiences myself in the 90s and 00s. Carmel is an interesting character and I liked that her friendships and emnities with women were the focus rather than her boyfriend. (He lurked stolidly in the background.) On the other hand, said relationships remained somehow mysterious and Carmel’s first person narrative never quite hooked me. I found the treatment of her eating disorder odd and the tempo of events uneven. This wasn’t any fault in the writing, which was beautiful, but perhaps had something to do with the memoir-ish structure. The narrative darts back and forth between school and university days, with no apparent rhyme or reason. This makes for a meditative rather than plot-driven novel.

Now and again there was a magnificently acute paragraph, though. This one in particular:

When men decided that women could be educated - this is what I think - they educated them on the male plan; they put them into schools with mottoes and school songs and muddy team games, they made them wear collars and ties. It was a way to concede the right to learning, yet remain safe; the products of the system would always be inferior to the original model. Women were forced to imitate men, and bound not to succeed at it.

As I re-read that passage, I noticed that Carmel refers to women as ‘they’ not ‘we’. Perhaps that is what limited my engagement with this novel - her sense of detachment. Thus I was interested but not moved, when I expected both. Hilary Mantel is an incredible writer, though, so I am holding her to much higher standards than most. At the end of the edition I read is an interview in which she says that A Place of Greater Safety was the first novel she wrote, back in the 1970s. That’s extraordinary! It’s one of my all time favourite books and she wrote it while in her 20s, never having written a novel before. What talent.

[Girish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dame Mantel is a master of casual horror, the one that will make your jaw drop even when she prepares you chapters in advance of an impending tragedy. In Beyond Black the horror was more explicit, but books like Eight months in Gazza Street and A Change in Climate hit you when you expect it the least. This book falls into the latter category and you get goaded into believing this is a book of memory.

The book is largely set in Tonbridge Hall, a female students hall of residence in 1970s. Uncontained by time, Carmel, the narrator goes back and forth in time to set context of her two defining friendships - Karina and Julianne. Carmel takes you into confidence to tell you this book is “a story about appetite: appetite in its many aspects and dimensions, its perversions and falling off, its strange reversals and refusals”.

This is the style of writing where nothing of significance happens overnight and yet it keeps you hooked. The initial stages of feminist movement and the class struggles are woven into the narrative in playful/angry manner. Sample this:

"We would be women who never sat down, women with rough hands and a social conscience, women with a prayer in their heart and a tight smile on their lips; women who, seeing an extra burden offered, would always step forward and suggest ‘Try me.’ You have heard of schools that train life’s officers: this was a school that trained life’s foolish volunteers."

Ms.Mantel also decides to break the fourth wall, teasing the reader into confidence. She tells you what this is not the story of, why she is delaying talking about other characters etc - which was experimental. I wish she had used more such tropes. Topics like anorexia, contraceptive pills, abortion, financial independence have been looked at with the lens of 1970s women.

This at times seems semiautobiographical. The ending left me feeling she did not want to smoothen edges - she wants the impact to be felt. Despite not feeling ready, I cherished the entire reading experience!

PS: This was the last fiction novel from Ms.Mantel's bibliography for me to finish. Mixed emotions :')

[Sandra Lawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Experiment in Love is Carmel's story of her childhood somewhere near Manchester. She is educated at Catholic schools, earns a scholarship as a passport out of her working class background, and fetches up at university in London. Here she makes new friends from different classes and parts of the country, but fails to sever her ties with her school friends, who have joined her at the same hall of residence.

Carmel reflects back on her life, prompted by a newspaper article about a friend and former co-student, but it is only when we approach the novel's end that we realise how her story, and her friend's profession, are linked, and can understand what has prompted Carmel's reminiscences.

This is a coming of age biographical novel, told against a background of the 1960s and early 1970s, of girls leaving home for the first time and trying to live independently in London. We are vaguely aware of the wave of feminism that underpins the era, although these girls are having to work it out for themselves. As someone who was born in the same year as Hilary Mantel, I was also touched by the memories that are so relevant to the 1960s, especially the ritual of buying the first school uniform, and encountering school teachers who are quick to lash out with a ruler.

T S Eliot famously stated that his past was part of his present, and this is acutely true of Carmel and her tale. She may have risen above her working class background, but she can never leave her former self behind.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carmel and karina grow up in a small North England town and are from similar working class backgrounds, and both struggle with mother's who are respectively demanding on their daughters in different ways. They form an unlikely relationship when both start at the local Catholic primary school before they both obtain a rare scholarship to the grammar school 3 bus rides away.
The book tells us about their childhood but also is a story of what happens when they both start university in London in 1970 and find themselves exposed to very different young women as they live in what appears to be the halls of residence from hell.
Hilary Mantels storytelling is wonderfully evocative of the time and place and particularly the mind of young women developing from children to adults with their preoccupations with sex, food, study, and each other. Her prose is crafted so well and I was drawn into the world with caustic one liners peppering the pages such as her describing her boyfriend 'he looked just what he was and nothing else: a prop forward from a northern grammar school, a family man in the making. In laterblife, I should think he has learnt to carve '.
The book is not however just a bitter sweet coming of age tale and the stories of carmel and her new friends build to a dramatic finale and as with the stark contradiction in carmel and karina's physical changes so much more is occurring within them as individuals.

[Sub_zero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilary Mantel imprime en Experimento de amor su particular sello a las novelas de iniciación. En esta obra, la aparición en prensa de una antigua compañera de estudios provoca en la protagonista una especie de regresión a sus años de infancia y adolescencia que no solo pinta un perfecto retrato de las cuitas e inquietudes propias de la juventud, sino que realiza una magnífica composición social, política e ideológica de Inglaterra en la década de los 60. Y es en este escenario, en el que Mantel se desenvuelve tan cómodamente, donde podremos adquirir una nueva visión de las complejas e incluso retorcidas indicaciones que guían a un grupo de mujeres en los terrenos de la amistad, el amor, la relación con el sexo opuesto y su interacción con un mundo que les exige cultivar metas, aspiraciones y ambiciosos proyectos de vida, pero no les proporciona los medios necesarios para llevarlos a cabo.

[Jean Carlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard of Hilary Mantel in regards to her more recent awards for Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, neither of which I have read at this point.
I found this book at a sale and thought I'd get a taste of her writing. I do like British authors in general and stories set there - and I found her to be an excellent writer. (which seems to be the most critical factor in my enjoying a book.) When you add the ability to create intriguing characters and a good storyline to fine prose, you have a winner. I haven't stayed up til nearly 1 a.m. to finish a book in a long while but I did it for this one.
I now want to read whatever she's written.

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great fan of Hilary Mantel. But this is the novel she wrote before she tuned all her instruments. A coming of age story set in Lancashire and London about a girl set the task of overcoming her pinched and draconian background. Should be okay but it's not, not at all. In fact it's bloody boring. The comedy falls flat. The prose is overblown and heavy handed and the characters are just plain dull. This was a chore to read.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this - I’ve never much liked the author when I have caught her on the radio or TV, but I picked up this short novel to try, as the cover blurb piqued my interest and I was curious about reading something by the twice Booker-winner.

The novel follows a young Englishwoman at university in the early seventies, though a lot of the story is told as reminisces of her childhood in the North West. Often beautifully written, sharply observed and at times witty, I can tell why Mantel would be critically acclaimed, she’s obviously a talented writer.

For me though, my enjoyment was tempered by never feeling that I was the target audience for the book. Had it been set twenty years later I would’ve found a lot more empathy with the characters, who to me felt stilted and obsessed with class and status to a degree I couldn’t understand. Had it been less focussed on thoughts and reminisces, and had more actually happened, I would’ve liked it more - as it was, all of the drama happens in the final fifty pages. Maybe had it been about men rather than women... though it would have been a completely different book.

Nevertheless, I am glad I read this, and have warmed to Mantel’s work.

[Come Musica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tra 3 e 4 stelle

[Jamie Bronstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A haunting and nostalgic short novel about women living in college accommodations in the 1960s and dealing with stresses like pregnancy scares and self-harm. I didn't know what was going to happen until the last 10 pages even though the entire novel hints at regret. Reading a good Mantel novel is like eating an extremely rich dark chocolate bonbon; she has a delicious facility for language that is poetic and lyrical without being cloying.

[miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

nobody writes about england like hilary mantel. her facility to describe things as they are, in a way that is immediately recognisable, with such savage perspicacity, is unmatched.

[Derek Driggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my current project of reading notable contemporary British novelists, I’m coming across so many wonderful things. Hilary Mantel writes with a pristine touch. In many ways this novel was reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson for me. It was darkly funny in the best British way, and at the same time inquisitively brooding. It was feminist but not prescriptive. It is short and fast, but you can tell it comes from a deeply thoughtful mind, one that was up to a lot more than meets the eye on the page. I will be revisiting this book for sure.
I only leave off a star because I don’t think this felt like the author’s passion project… I didn’t feel as engrossed as I might otherwise because I think the author had bigger fish to fry. And from what I’ve heard about the Cromwell books that seems to be the case. But I definitely recommend.

[Siân · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of those rare books that manages to be funny, poignant, and intriguing to the end. A book that deals a lot with the past and growing up - there is something intrinsically real about it even though the characters in the book are growing in a different time to when I did and are from different kinds of background too.

What Hilary Mantel achieves is that universal awkwardness of childhood that transcends all time and background. She also seems to write such real characters too - flawed - characters with good and bad traits; complex, and subsequently you both like and dislike them (but without becoming fed up). Which essentially is what people are. I find this often with characters in books being too black and white one way to 'good' and 'bad'.

Great read.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies were so riveting, so beautifully crafted -- I missed them terribly when I finished them. To fill the void, I decided to embark on an all-Mantel/all-the-time summer. I liked Experiment in Love, but it certainly was not IMHO of the same caliber as the previously mentioned historical novels. Had I read it without the others as touchstones, I think I would have given this book a higher rating. The writing is wonderful, but the story never really engaged me. I found none of the characters particularly compelling, which was part of the problem. Still, I am onto my next Mantel selection -- love her writing well enough to keep up with Project Hilary!

[Fri · Rating 4 out of 5]

alfa yayınları'ndan "bir aşk deneyi" adı ile çıkmış.
türkçeye çevrilmiş çoğu kitabın kaderi olduğu gibi belki kötü çeviriyle, kesinlikle berbat redaksiyonla, iyi yazıldığı belli bir kitap okumuş oldum.
mantel kadın diliyle yazılmış romanlar okumak isteyen biri için iyi bir tercih olacağa benziyor. 5 değil 4 yıldızın nedeni kitabın yeterince detaylandırılmamış olması. insan daha fazlasını isteyerek son sayfayı kapatıyor.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was gripped by this book and could hardly bear to put it down. The characters are so real (and clearly there is an element of autobiography in the central narrator). I don't want to put in any spoilers but suffice to say you get the feeling that it isn't going to end happily, and it doesn't. Hilary Mantel is a powerful writer and I found this book very satisfying indeed.