The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

by Hilary Mantel

One of Britain’s most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary short stories that demonstrate what modern England has become

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.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 30, 2014

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

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey.”
- The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Mantel



Seriously, anytime I fantasize about writing a book I read a Hilary Mantel novel and become discouraged. Reading Mantel is like watching Michael Jordan play basketball or Federer play tennis (or back in the day watching Tiger Woods play golf). Unless you are born blind or stupid you realize that these people just don't exist on the same field or plane as the rest of humanity. No matter how many swings, shots, or hits I practiced, I could never play at the level of those masters. No matter how many books I read or words I write, my brain recognizes that Mantel's skill with a sentence is almost superhuman. She is elegant and strong. She doesn't waste a word. Her prose seems to float with a bold efficiency and beauty that is hard to balance. It is like watching a ballerina kick Mike Tyson's ass.

And I haven't even got to the fact that she can choke you with emotion and knock you out with a surprise twist and well-played verbal throw down. The normal laws of gravity and axioms of art do not apply to Mantel's prose. Her words float. Her sentences run forever. Mantel DOES not fuck around with the English language. She owns it. Read her novels (or her stories) and she will sit on your chest and own you too.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, what a nice surprise! I didn't expect her to be funny. Sly wit and careful attention, I must read more.

[Annet · Rating 4 out of 5]

In those days, the doorbell didn't ring often, and if it did I would draw back into the body of the house. Only at a persistent ring would I creep over the carpets, and make my way to the front door with its spy-hole. We were big on bolts and shutters, deadlocks and mortises, safety-chains and windows that were high and barred. Through the spy-hole I saw a distraught man in a crumpled silver-grey suit: thirties, Asian. He had dropped back from the door, and was looking about him, at the closed and locked door opposite, and up the dusty marble stairs. He patted his pockets, took out a balled-up handkerchief, and rubbed it across his face. He looked so fraught that his sweat could have been tears. I opened the door....

A dark combination of delicious, gloomy short stories by Hilary Mantel. All stories feature women in the main role and these are not happy stories. Every story immediately plunges into a rather disturbing gloomy, sad or weird, uncertain situation, unclear how it is going to end. Easy to read, most stories fascinating. Really enjoyed this one...
The stories were already published separately over the years, first one from 1993, most stories in The Guardian and The London Review of Books. For those who like a disturbing bewildering read of short stories... recommended. First story Sorry to Disturb, features a woman in an apartment in Saudi Arabia, her husband stationed there for work. She takes medicine, clearly is not really well and somewhat depressed, and one day there's a 'distraught man in a crumpled, silver-grey suit: Thirties, Asian', ringing the doorbell. And it is the start of a stalking story. I read Mantel lived in Saudi Arabia also, so undoubtedly her experiences sound through in this story. Loved this collection of stories.

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a mixture of rather weak reasons:
1. I was out for the day and unexpectedly finished the book I had with me, so went to a second-hand charity bookshop.
2. I didn't want to start a novel, as I had a meaty one waiting at home; short stories seemed ideal.
3. I relished the shock of my mother when I told her what I was reading.

It was a reasonably varied and diverting collection, but I won't be rushing to read another Mantel. A couple have dashes of magical realism, and there's a nod to the vogue for vampires. A couple would be more exciting and rewarding with titles that weren't spoilers.

UNSAVOURY

Although I don't share my mother's visceral horror at the title of the collection, the overwhelming feeling was one of unpleasantness. In particular, there were many snide asides about class and race. In some cases, they were perhaps appropriate for the time, place and characters who uttered them, but that doesn't apply to "How Shall I Know You?". Overall, for stories published in 2014, I was left with a nasty taste in my mouth.

SHATTERED AND UNSEEING; UNINVITED GUESTS

Every one of the ten stories features something that is not seen or should not be seen (I've included a quote for each), and most had glass shattered in a dramatic way.

The first and last stories have a woman alone in a flat, who has an unexpected and potentially sinister visitor. (And a character in another story is Mr Simister!).

I could get profound about this, but I didn't really care enough to go beyond noticing these recurring ideas.

THE STORIES

Sorry to Disturb

Set in Saudi Arabia in 1983 and apparently somewhat autobiographical. An expat wife has "been made helpless by the society around me", so is effectively confined to her housing block, making it hard to close the door on the persistent, but not entirely welcome Pakistani man, of uncertain motives. She's on medication that causes occasional hallucinations: the title refers to the doorbell, but also her state of mind. "Even after all this time it's hard to grasp exactly what happened."

As a woman "one was always observed... without precisely being seen." Invisibility was a sign of respect.

Comma

The eight year old narrator, and forbidden friend, Mary (aged 10 and from a less respectable family) go exploring in a lazy hot summer. In particular, there is a rich family's house with a secret. The final page has a flurry of gratuitous punctuation analogies to match the title.

Hiding in a bush, she "looked straight at us, but did not see."

The Long QT

This opens, "He was forty-five when his marriage ended, decisively", and he's at a party, snogging a neighbour. But the marriage doesn't end the way you might expect.

"her eyes had already glazed."

Winter Break

A controlling husband, very anti-children, takes an annual winter holiday with his wife. This has a twist, but it's flagged rather too obviously for my taste.

A taxi driver, turning to reverse the car, "stared past her unseeing."

Harley Street

Narrated by a disaffected meeter and greeter at a Harley Street clinic, it was like a sub-Alan Bennett monologue.

Patients "look right through me", but "when the patients come in I seem to see straight though them to the bone."

Offences Against the Person

A teenager is working at her father's law firm - alongside his mistress. Dull.

"His eyes passed over me, but he didn't seem to see me."

How Shall I Know You?

This seems heavily autobiographical. An author reluctantly accepts an invitation to speak at a small literary society in the 1990s. She doesn't have a good word to say about anywhere or anyone, observing her audience: "many had beards including the women". She prefers to go without an evening meal than risk an additional encounter with literary society members.

She repeatedly comments on the yellow skin of a girl who works at the guest house, and mentions three female authors for no obvious reasons (Rowling, Byatt and Brookner).

On a lighter note, when asked about her literary influences, "I replied with my usual list of obscure , indeed non-existent Russians" and another time. "invented a Portuguese writer".

"I didn't look her in the face", embarrassed about giving a generous tip.

The Heart Fails Without Warning

Sisters aged 11 and 14, the elder of whom has anorexia. "The whole household... enmeshed in multiple deception": a father who busies himself with work and "was no more than a shadow in their lives", a mother who thinks a full-length mirror will help, a sister jealous of the attention, and a school who wants her to stay away because it "has a competitive ethos" and fears "mass fatalities if the [other] girls decide to compete".

"When she looks in a mirror God knows what she sees."

Terminus

"I saw my dead father on a train" is a good opening. After that, it's dull, despite potentially intriguing questions: "is experience always in the past?"

"I had happened to see a thing I should never have seen" and "his look was turning inwards."

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

This tries to be provocative, profound and funny, with thoughts of alternative history and alternative reality. "History could always have been otherwise." It didn't really deliver for me.

"He had not looked at me before, not to see me."
"When she comes out [of the eye hospital] will she be able to see?"
""Neither in nor out of the house, visible, but not seen."

QUOTES

* "I closed the door discreetly, and melted into the oppressive hush."

* "I spent two hours with my neighbour... widening the cultural gap."

* "I admired these diaspora Asians, their polyglot enterprise, the way they withstood rebuffs, and I wanted to see if she was more Western or Eastern or what."

* "Eating out was more a gesture than a pleasure... without wine and its rituals there was nothing to slow it."

* "Furniture is frolicking in the dark."

* "The hottest summer... that... bleached adults of their purpose... each day a sun like a child's painted sun burned in a sky made white with heat. Laundry hung like flags of surrender from washing lines."

* "Her face, in early middle age, had become indefinite, like wax; waiting for a pinch and a twist to make its shape."

* "She did not like parties that involved open doors... Strangers might come in, wasps... It was too easy to stand on the threshold... neither here nor there."

* "A tiny chime hung in the air as the glasses shivered in her fingers... the glass exploded... She sunk into the shards as smoothly as if they were satin, as if they were snow, and the limestone gleamed around her, an ice field, each tile with its swollen pillowed edge, each with a shadow pattern faint as breath."

* "We dress for the weather we want, as if to bully it, even though we've seen the forecast."

* "He drove very fast, treating each serve of the road as a personal insult."

* "She could feel Phil's opinions backing up behind his teeth."

* "A bed of geraniums so scarlet, as if the earth had bled through the pavements; I saw Guardsmen wilting in symmetry."

* "Having been a brittle person, she became flexible" by taking up yoga when her husband left.

* An area "where the dustbins had wheels but the cars were stacked on bricks."

* "A face of feral sweetness."

* A polytechnic is "for those who were bright enough to say 'affinity', but still wore cheap nylon coats."

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title alone should be enough to give a reader pause (not to mention the cover of a headless woman holding a dead rose, an indication that we haven't hopped on the Love Train). Hilary Mantel's collection of ten taut and acerbic tales wouldn't be out of place on a dark and stormy night, or at a slumber party where someone holds a flashlight under their chin, illuminating the bones and hollows of their skeleton like a specter of death.

These aren't scary stories, but they are haunting, the stuff adult nightmares are made of. They are about depression and loneliness, occasionally tinged with eerie humor that adds a shimmer of the surreal, like a dream you know is a dream, but you can't quite wake from until it finishes somewhat horribly.

The first, Sorry to Disturb looks through the keyhole of a door into a domestic trap. A British woman, living on a foreign workers' compound in Saudi Arabia while her husband suffers through his work assignment, is befriended by a Pakistani man. She dreads his visits, but can't stop herself from opening the door when he stops by. Everything about her life, from the heat to the strictures of a repressive culture, from the wife's loneliness to her husband's silence, is claustrophobic and depressing. And the story is so stunningly good, I tremble.

Don't we all have at least one dark memory from childhood, of doing something wicked out of spite or curiosity or that simple meanness that comes from thinking the world revolves around us? Isn't there at least one childhood companion we palled around with despite our caution and distaste? Hilary Mantel knows the truth about our small, mean pasts and she wrote Comma to bear witness.

There are the precise moments when marriages fall apart, those moments Mantel illustrates in The Long QT and Offenses Against the Person. There are moments we wish we could take back, things we wish we could unsee, sounds we pray to unhear, as the wife in Winter Break must, after her journey in a taxi down a twisting road on a nameless Greek island with her husband. The thump, the thud, the glimpse of the unspeakable in the moment before the trunk door is slammed shut.

Hilary Mantel keeps the reader off-balance with a incongruous levity—there's often a giggle burbling just beneath the surface that threatens to erupt at the absolute worst moment, because it's all so very absurd. Such is the plight of the writer of middling fame in How Shall I Know You? and the grotesque and sad creatures she encounters, until she realizes that she is one of them. The mocking cruelty of siblings in The Heart Fails Without Warning becomes very unfunny when it's clear that mortal danger is having the last laugh. The collection saves one of the best jokes for last: the Stockholm Syndrome earnestness of a hapless homeowner when the plumber turns out to be an IRA sniper in the title story—you find yourself watching the train wreck with undeniable glee.

There is little pleasure for me in the stories themselves, these grim and ghastly images of suffering and loneliness. But Mantel writes with such precision of detail, such surety of destination, that I am spellbound. Phrases such as "turd-coloured candlewick cover" "the brown dinner .... would shrivel to a stain in its ovenproof serving dish" and that singular image of a disfigured child resembling a comma—Mantel is a master of quiet menace and disturbing disappointments.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out as a 4-, or perhaps even 5-star book, but dwindled down to three stars in the end.

I love Hilary Mantel's writing. I found her rather confusing in Wolf Hall, even though the power of narrative could not be denied; by the time I read Bring Up the Bodies, I had got attuned to her peculiar way of writing and was enjoying the style. Mantel uses the English language in surprising ways and her sentences sometimes move in mysterious ways, though always grammatically correct. Similes and idioms jump out of the pages when least expected and surprise and sometimes startle you. This collection is also no exception.

These stories are, for the most part, dark and dismal and attempt to portray the seething underbelly of modern society. It lifts up the polished stone of our civilised world and reveals the worms and bugs crawling beneath. It may put one off if one prefers pleasanter literary fare: however, being the twisted freak that I am, thematically these were right up my street. What let me down was mainly the sameness. It could all be the same story - humanity is a mess! (Yes, we know it, now let's move on.)

The title story was easily the weakest for me. I am no fan of Margaret Thatcher, and I feel I'd not have been too disappointed if the event had really happened at the time - as a leftist, I was pro-IRA and anti-England in the early eighties during my college days. I guess I was expecting the story to debate heavy political and philosophical issues, but it skirted all of them and ended up as a damp squib of alternative history.

There are two stories which are autobiographical, I felt: Sorry to Disturb and How Shall I Know You?. Both were powerful in showing the author's paranoia and sickness (possible hypochondriasis?). I felt along with her as I am also afflicted by the same demons. In the first story, Mantel gives a factually if not politically correct portrait of Saudi society as far as the expat is concerned: the subtle racism and misogyny (I know, I worked there for a year). In the second story, her anxiety at being trapped in a dismal hotel in an unfamiliar city reminded me of the time when I had to stay a night in lonely lodge in Dehra Dun in North India, with only a housekeeper-cum-cook-cum-general dogsbody for company, with dogs howling through the night in the vast grounds. However, I think this story is laced with a bit of class contempt which jars.

Of the remaining stories, I enjoyed Comma and Winter Break; and though not enjoyable reading, The Heart Fails Without Warning was also powerful. The newly added story, The School of English, is a worthy attempt to touch on the plight of foreign domestic workers in affluent countries - though I felt that it was not very effective.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mantel, eerily observant and wickedly funny, is a strange combination of self-conscious fear and lashing wit. Faced with her precision, I am reduced to the inarticulate: a laugh, a sigh, a whispered outbreath, G’ol.

Sometimes she uses just a word, an adjective or a verb, that brings a smile, a wince, a world to life: “At six, the steeple-headed Saleem had lost his baby fat, and his movements were tentative, as if his limbs were snappable.”

The story “How Shall I Know You?” speaks directly to my fears. An author is persuaded to speak to a book group outside of London and it is a loathsome destination: her lodging “was not precisely as the photograph had suggested. Set back from the road, it seemed to grow out of a parking lot, a jumble of vehicles double-parked and crowding to the edge of the sidewalk.” The smell of the place had a “travelers’ stench…tar of ten thousand cigarettes, fat of ten thousand breakfasts, the leaking metal seep of a thousand saving cuts” recalling her struggle with a biography about a man who accidentally cut his throat while shaving. The author recalls an earlier, presumably more luxurious accommodation:

”In Madrid, by contrast, my publishers had put me in a hotel suite that consisted of four small dark paneled rooms. They had sent me an opulent, unwieldy, scented bouquet, great wheels of flowers with woody stems. The concierge brought me heavy vases of a grayish glass, slippery in my hands, and I edged them freighted with blooms onto every polished surface; I stumbled from room to room, coffinned against the brown paneling, forlorn, strange, under a pall of pollen, like a person trying to break out of her own funeral.”

The story speaks to my fears because I am struck with terror when someone suggests actually meeting an author, or asking them a question. Haven't they already told us what they wanted to say? What on earth could I possibly ask? Good lord, and what, wither under that funny, devastating, vampiric wit, that x-ray vision?

This is a slim collection, beautifully printed with vast spacing and acres of white. There is room for your mind to wander to what she might have said but did not. Mantel uses words in a way that has no precedent. Her vision is unique. She doesn’t need as many words as others often do to convey her devilish vision. You would have thought, if you’d tried to read her award-winning novels about Thomas Cromwell, that she could not write only a little, but you’d be wrong. She can, and she does, here. These are perfect little gems that speak to her (and our) deepest fears, the deepest held secrets of the heart.

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilary Mantel had written many books, among them two long historical novels which both have won the Booker Prize - Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies - making her one of the few authors to win the Booker twice, and the only woman to do so. I can't speak about them as I haven't read them (yet), but when I saw this collection I thought that it was finally time to get acquainted.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher is Hilary Mantel's second collection of short stories in total and first in eleven years. Most of these stories have been published before in various places - the eponymous one being the most recent. Though they all have female protagonists, the stories themselves vary greatly in theme and setting - The opening Sorry to Disturb which is set in Saudi Arabia, and focuses on a female foreign narrator who tries to shun a persistent local man as she feels more and more encircled by him, The Heart Fails Without Warningis the story of a continuous decline of a young anorectic, as observed by her rude and unsympathetic sister; How Shall I Know You? is about a slightly neurotic English writer travelling across the country to a small town where she is to give a reading, and the young woman that she meets at a local hotel.

The titular story obviously attracted the most attention, as it was chosen to give the volume its name - understandably so, as probably no other British politician has attracted such strong and divided reaction. There were many people in Britain who wanted to off the Iron Lady during her reign, and this story features one of them - an IRA assassin and a wealthy woman connected by their loathing for the Prime Minister. She not only allows him to use her house as a sniping post, but also gives him advice as to how to properly stage it as a break-in and not leave any trail - and asks him to tie her up next to the window, so she can see all the action in its gory detail.

I thought that the last, title story would be my favorite, but it wasn't - my favorite turned to be included pretty early in the volume. Comma, the second story, is about two young girls from different backgrounds who both from sort of a friendship as they spy on a neighboring family and their unusual baby. Mantel invokes a perfect sense of nostalgia and youth, and the only complaint it is way to short. I could easily have read a whole novel about these girls, and wanted to know much more about them - how they'd grown up, and how their lives would turn out to be.

Unfortunately, this complaint can be extended to almost all of the stories in this collection - the endings are way too sudden and unsatisfying, and I was mostly left unaffected - and in the case of Comma disappointed that they were already over. Hilary Mantel can write very well, but I don't think that these stories necessarily show her at her best form - I think I would like to read her when she feels no constraint of form, and can write and develop both characters and structure and plot as long as she wants. Which, I guess, is the perfect motivation for me to finally get around to reading her novels - and now I'm interested in not only the historical ones.

[Paula Mota · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilary Mantel escreve com competência, mas não me impressiona. Tem sentido de humor, mas só esporadicamente. Cria personagens extravagantes ou inadaptadas, mas parece tudo um pouco forçado. “O Assassinato de Margaret Thatcher” é um conjunto de contos sobre pessoas desajustadas ou em situações desconfortáveis pela presença de outros, em países estrangeiros ou no local de trabalho, em que alguns têm um final satisfatório ou inesperado, mas outros parecem ter sido abandonados a meio.

- Se soubesse que ia ser assim tão aborrecido – disse-lhe-, tinha trazido o livro que requisitei na biblioteca.
A Mary brincava com pés de relva, de vez em quando murmurava:
- O meu pai diz: “Vê lá se te começas a portar bem, Mary, senão, vais ter de ir para o reformatório!”
- O que é isso?
- É um lugar onde nos batem todos os dias.
- O que fizeste?
- Nada, mas eles batem na mesma.
Encolhi os ombros. Parecia bastante provável.
- Batem-nos só aos fins de semana ou também nos dias de escola?
* Vírgula *

[Maria Espadinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Beleza da Tristeza


Estes pequenos contos enquadram-se lindamente no espectro das cores que compõem o arco-íris da tristeza.

Não obstante, a tristeza não deixa de ser fonte de beleza! Ou nunca conheceríamos os Blues. Nem tão pouco os Requiems. Nem os soberbos nenúfares...

Bem!...É um 3.5 castrado e um conselho: comecem pelo fim 😉

[Jemidar]

The only disappointing thing I can see about this book is that the title isn't true!

[capture stories · Rating 3 out of 5]

I happened to take a book with me on a road trip just past Thanksgiving vacation. By wit, I chose "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hillary Mantel" as my accompaniment. The short story collections consisted of 10 uniquely whiffs of quibbles representing the author's unique literature signature. There are bits and pieces of primitiveness and viciousness well played by the master writer as when and where and which corner you may find a lurking utterance of an oddity. The well-taled scum of the city and uptown life grasping English society can be rather entertaining and dull with a mixture of feelings that makes one recoil with dismay at their ungraspable complexity. Disturbing relationships with the unexpected meetings between the various characters are a rarity of "queer characters" and well worth knowing at the same time.

Interestingly peculiar, I would say? Have you read a strangely amusing book?

One thing that really surprised me about this novel was Mantel’s choice of queer characters and mastery use of words that were just kind of diverting and delightful narratives. One can say that it is faute de mieux. The more you read, the better it gets…

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competently written, these gloomy slice of life stories do not capture the heart but do keep you reading on and on - 3 stars

I felt a wish to be fictionalized

From the first story about an expat wife in Saudi Arabia Hilary Mantel brings us quite gloomy slices of 70’s up till contemporary life. The tales in The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher shine most when they are based on autobiographical experiences (like living in Saudi Arabia as a female or trying to get published as a woman in London) or when they are full on adressing modern day class society.

There is a hallucinating woman who (doesn’t) deal with an unwanted visitor, strongly based on the biography and illnesses of Mantel herself. Her musings on chronical pain and hallucinations due to medicines really drag you into her world. Then we have reminiscences of childhood cruelty, a rather shocking end to a marriage and the akwardness of a taxiride turned sinister by a roadkill.

Harley Street was a bit vague story of nurses, where the nicknames of the doctors in the clinic was the most entertaining. The story after this one, about a lawyer and his daughter finding out his adultery, also lacked a punch in my opinion. The story that follows is full of atmosphere, following a writer who travels to a dreary, slightly creepy hotel for a reading. Then we have a tale of anorexia and an unhappy family, with a workaholic dad and a sardonic sister becoming undone. The next one is a vague vignet of a woman who thinks she sees her dead father on the train.

The School of English, the story before the last one, was most powerful in my opinion. It’s about an immigrant housekeeper who gets assaulted. A tale full of casual racism by the superrich and an indictment against their entitlement. The main character muses poignantly when she gave consent to all this abuse: when she took the job, when she entered England or when she was born? This was one of the stories where I really felt uneasy and emotionally engaged while reading.

The title story finally was evocative in concept but lacked a real finale to conclude this bundle on a high note.
Strangely enough, even with the main character afraid of being killed herself after Margaret Tatcher is assassinated, it didn’t make me feel any tension.
A solid bundle of short stories but a tad dissapointing after the total brilliance of Bring Up the Bodies; Mantel can do so much more literary magic.

[Karen· · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure...
I'm not sure if a collection of short stories should be quite so dissimilar.
I'm not sure if, when you give hobgoblins, zombies and vampires a role, whether you can cast them alongside an ornery tale of marital infidelity, does that matter?
I'm not sure if the brilliance of the title story only serves to point out the facile, if disturbing twist in Winter Break.
I'm not sure about a story that has the narrator see her dead father on a train, and believe it really was her dead father pulling out of Clapham Junction, bound for Waterloo.
I'm not sure about the irony of fate in The Long QT. Isn't that a bit too easy? An undiagnosed heart condition?
I'm not sure if sometimes I felt that Ms Mantel was being a little self-indulgent. But don't question me about that, because I'm not even sure what I mean by it.
I'm not entirely sure if the wry humour - and there is a lot of extremely funny, dry, sardonic humour - if that does enough to counterbalance the unsettling queasiness that is induced.
I'm not sure if loving four tales out of ten is quite enough.
I'm not sure if I just wasn't in the right mood to be nauseated and amused at the same time.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sorry to Disturb (2009) was first published with the telling subtitle 'A Memoir' in the London Review of Books. Even without this hint, it's obvious that the story is autobiographical - because the protagonist is a writer, and because (I already knew this somehow) Mantel lived in Saudi Arabia and has previously written a novel based on this period of her life (Eight Months on Ghazzah Street). The story centres on a persistent local man who knocks on the narrator's door and tries, in various ways, to insinuate himself into her life. His presence, real or imagined, becomes a symbol of the oppressive atmosphere the narrator feels closing in on her, the sense of always being observed and policed. Parts of the tale are constructed after the fact, with reference to the narrator's diary entries, which she uses to track the interloper's visits to her home. I found myself distracted by the memoir aspect - is this just a true story? But then, how true is any autobiographical story? (Or: how much of a memory, or a diary entry, is fiction?) And there was something that struck me as off about the final line: that use of 'frolicking' seemed to hit the wrong note. I liked the mood and sense of place created here but found the story itself uneven.

Comma (2010) I thought was brilliant, really perfect. Halfway through, one particular line gave me the very strong feeling I had read it before; turns out it was published in the Guardian, so I guess I must have read it back then, and I'm pleased to have rediscovered it. It is a perfect recipe of evocative elements: nostalgia and childhood friendship mixed with real dread and horror. It disarms the reader by pre-empting the notion that the narrator's friend is imaginary - this, despite initial appearances, is not the point of the story. There are lots of delicious details to be picked out of this one, and it feels perfectly formed. My favourite.

The Long QT (2012) was also originally published in the Guardian; before checking the credits, my guess was that it had appeared in a women's magazine. (It feels like one of those very short tales that show up in things like the 'story issue' of Stylist.) A philandering husband is caught red-handed by his wife, with melodramatic consequences, although the ending does make a neat joke of the opening line about how 'his marriage ended, decisively'.

Winter Break (2011) is another very short one, and creepy, almost a ghost story with its young couple in an unfamiliar country, the cool night, the growing sense of unease. Very Daphne du Maurier. However, while it has an unnerving twist, it just doesn't really do anything with that twist and ends flatly.

Harley Street (1993) I really enjoyed. It's not a plot-driven story, just a little character study of a Harley Street administrator, whose nature is quickly established through her judgmental portraits of fellow staff and her oft-repeated 'as I've said...'; her droll narration made me laugh out loud a couple of times. I read a review that criticised this story for being old-fashioned, but I thought that was the point of it (and it is the oldest story here - in terms of original publication date, at least). The narrator is old-fashioned, and prejudiced, and the joke is ultimately on her.

Offences Against the Person (2008) is an inconsequential snippet in which a teenage girl realises her father is having an affair. It didn't do anything for me.

How Shall I Know You? (2000) harks back to the unremittingly drab world of Mantel's 2005 novel Beyond Black. Although the main character here is, once again, a writer, there are many similarities with the lives of the professional psychic and her assistant depicted in Beyond Black - the depressing hotels, the weird, desperate audiences, a restless life on the road with everything always feeling unfinished, even the lurid nightmares the narrator suffers. The story is funny, but reminded me most of the kind of dark and grotesque humour found in TV comedy such as Nighty Night and The League of Gentlemen; it also put me in mind of DBC Pierre's recent Breakfast with the Borgias. While I thought it was well constructed, it reminded me of what I didn't like, or rather found exhausting, about Beyond Black, the relentless, grubby bleakness. There's also an ending that doesn't fit or feel necessary.

The Heart Fails Without Warning (2009) tells of two young sisters, one of whom is anorexic. Beautifully written, it's a series of short vignettes charting Morna's decline over six months: her younger sibling, Lola, is unsympathetic and often rude about her condition, but tiny moments illustrate their sisterly bond (when Lola touches Morna's shoulder blade 'she felt it for hours; she was surprised not to see the indent in her palm'). The ending leaves the question of Morna's fate open. I liked this one, although I did find it oddly difficult to tell the names Morna and Lola apart and kept forgetting which was which, but maybe this was deliberate.

Terminus (2004) opens with a woman glimpsing her dead father on a passing train, but the recurrent imagery of death and disaster ('bomb warnings' pasted up around the station, 'embalmed meals for travellers') is more symbolic than supernatural. I enjoyed the imagery of this, and the suggestions of a more richly imagined world in which this particular scene is taking place, I just wanted more of it.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: August 6th 1983 was published in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. I read it then, and although I didn't think it was brilliant, it interested me enough that I wanted to read more of Mantel's stories, despite the fact that I didn't love Beyond Black and have never been interested in the Thomas Cromwell books. Anyway, this story: despite the supposedly controversial subject matter and title, it isn't at all shocking. It's another one that clearly has an autobiographical basis: it is an alternate history, something that could, conceivably, have happened, and this gives the situation and characters the ring of authenticity.

The longer stories in this book I found, on the whole, to be the most successful, but I do tend to struggle with very short stories anyway (I think there's always a little bit of my mind that thinks anyone could write them). I loved the style and found beautiful lines in most, if not all, of the stories, but slightly awkward or ill-fitting endings seemed to be a common theme. As a collection, it's pleasingly varied: several stories that seem to be based on the author's own life, some that very plainly aren't, characters of all ages and professions and positions in society, a mixture of themes from adultery to ghosts. Recommended whether you've read Mantel's novels or not.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vivid descriptions, wonderful writing and amazing characterizations, make this one of my favorite book of short stories for this year. All are good but there is one that sticks in my mind, the ending kind of socked me in the face, had to go back and re-read to see if I read it right the first time.Then went and re-read the whole story to see if any clues were given along the way. The first time the ending kind of snuck up on me, I just love authors that can do that. Anyway, not going to tell you the name of the story because that would give an unfair advantage, if you know it is coming it is not as surprising.

Anyway a group of stories definitely worth reading.

[Helle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of 11 bleak, unsettling stories which conjure up the atmosphere of Beyond Black and which are completely unlike Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell novels. There are some interesting moments in this motley crue of stories, especially when we see glimpses of Mantel’s trademark biting tongue and sardonic comments, e.g. this comment by the 1st person narrator about Margaret Thatcher in the title (and best) story:

She sleeps four hours a night. She lives on the fumes of whisky and the iron in the blood of her prey.

A few more quotes to set the scene:

An indoor smog hovered, about head height.

It is the small-talk afterwards that wears me down, and the twinkling jocularity, the ‘book-chat’ that grates like a creaking hinge.

Near Buckingham Palace there was a bed of geraniums – so scarlet, as if the earth had bled through the pavements: I saw the Guardsmen wilting in sympathy, fainting at their posts.

But the winter came early for her…

Then the man turned, and his face was sodden with stupidity…

Some critics say these stories belong in the suburban noir genre. We mostly have a 1st person narrator who is possibly unreliable, certainly often unstable, and a string of disturbing characters, sometimes living right next door. Things are hidden in the neighbourhoods, which are often menacing, and the tone is one of muted dread. Mantel’s version of suburban noir is a pared-down one, so much so that many of the stories deliberately take on the unrealistic hues of a fable, a dark one.

Some of the stories felt a bit bland to me. A few left me puzzled. All of them made me slightly depressed. So, despite the stories being quite different (we begin with a semi-biographical story that takes place in Saudia Arabia and end with an assassination attempt in Windsor), presumably because they were written between 2000 and 2012 but put together in this collection, they are all uncomfortable stories, sometimes chilling, always utterly unsentimental.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a regular short story reader, but I'll read anything Hilary Mantel writes. She didn't disappoint me with this collection of ten short stories. Funny, creepy, sad, surprising: while some stories are better than others, all display Mantel's witty, incisive, elegant and seemingly effortless prose.

If I were a writer, I'd want to be just like Hilary Mantel.

[Lyubov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Много отдавна не бях чела разкази и не мога да дам смислен отговор защо. Някакси не посягам към тях или любимите ми автори просто не творят в тази кратка форма. В случая с Хилари Мантел обаче точно сборникът ѝ с разкази "Убийството на Маргарет Тачър" ми се стори най-добрият вариант за първа среща с авторката. Книгата се чете леко и бързо, буквално за един следобед, ако човек ѝ се отдаде изцяло. Разказите вътре се отличават сериозно един от друг и всеки носи своя специфична атмосфера. Това, което ги обединява донякъде, е тънката игра по ръба на границата реално/нереално. Предполагам че всеки читател ще намери за себе си няколко любими разказа в сборника според личните си предпочитания. Моето сърце припозна:

1. "Запетая", в който Мантел наистина напомня леко на атмосферата, създавана от умелото перо на Дона Тарт, както ми подсказа една приятелка. Две малки мрачни момиченца в края на детството скитат из мрачните улици на своя квартал и откриват нещо неподозирано в една тайнствена къща. Цитати:
"Това лято към края на юли беше изсмукало целеустремеността на възрастните."
"Колко хубаво е това, което върши с нас времето. Поръсва ни с милост, подобна на вълшебния прах на феите."

2. "Удължен TQ-интервал" – етюд върху ролята на изневярата и колко дълго трябва да потискаме желанията си, подсилена с рязък, неочакван край. Цитати:
"Той знаеше открай време, че може да я има. Само че не беше я сварвал сама в летен следобед, с леко зачервено лице и на три чаши вино верде от пълната трезвост."
"Понякога, каза той, хората умират, смеейки се."

3. "Зимна почивка", един от най-запомнящите се разкази в книгата, чийто край отново трясва капака на реалността върху нашите очаквания. Цитат:
"Тя беше достигнала онзи етап от детеродната възраст, в който ДНК веригите се заплитат, а хромозомите се лутат насам-натам и допускат грешки."

4. "Харли Стрийт" – надзъртане към живота в частна медицинска клиника и сложните отношения между персонала, които са тънки и ефимерни като паяжина и могат да се скъсат и при най-лекия натиск. Цитати:
"В началото на лятото тя започна да твърди, че мъжете не си струват усилието. Телевизята е за предпочитане, не е толкова еднообразна."
"Заведението е истинско бижу – старомодно, много евтино и вероятно последното място в Лондон, където келнерите се отличават с автентична парижка неучтивост."
"Сънувах, че е понеделник. Обичаен сън за човек на пълна работна седмица."

"Убийството на Маргарет Тачър" е интелигентен подбор от изящни късчета проза, който си струва прочита, независимо дали познавате творчеството на Хилари Мантел и дали обичате да четете разкази. Мантел е майстор на запомнящата се фраза, а лично аз съм почитател точно на този тип автори.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only acquaintance with Hilary Mantel until now has been via her two wonderful, Booker-winning books, "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies." While waiting for the final volume in the Cromwell trilogy, why not dip into her un-Tudor oeuvre and see what else she can do? The ten stories in "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher" present a good opportunity. Most were written and published over the last five years, one back in the '90s. The title story is the most recent and was embargoed before publication date and therefore omitted from the ARC I received from LibraryThing.com. Thankfully, "The New York Times Book Review" printed the story in its entirety so we early readers got the full Mantel.

And it turns out she can do quite a lot, especially in the longer stories, several of which leave a lasting impression, often of unease and foreboding. In the opening story, "Sorry to Disturb," which seems clearly autobiographical, an ex-pat woman chafing against the constraints of her life in Saudi Arabia opens her door to a Pakistani man in distress and becomes subject to his increasingly intrusive attentions as we wonder what is real. The story ends with one of Mantel's signature uses of language that startles and delights:

“I can never be certain that doors will stay closed and on their hinges, and I do not know, when I turn out the lights at night, whether the house is quiet as I left it or the furniture is frolicking in the dark.”

Frolicking furniture? Really? Jarring but perfect.

"Comma" is perhaps my favorite in this collection, beautifully evoking a hot summer and two mis-matched children frightened and exhilarated by what they might see spying on a neighbor. "How Shall I Know You?" is a creepily comic tale of an author's dutiful trekking to book clubs in the hinterlands. And in the marvelous title story, a woman contributes commentary on the petty and political failings of the prime minister her uninvited guest is preparing to assassinate.

Mantel's stories are dark, funny, surprising, insightful and beautifully crafted. What more would I want?

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilary Mantel is an excellent writer, and my unenthusiastic response to this collection of short stories has more to do with my frustration with trying to write a review of ten short stories. Do I write ten reviews?

Some things that many of the stories have in common, but not always, include:
— Woman as main character
— Poor health of woman
— Unresolved surprise ending

1. Sorry to Disturb is a first person narration of the experiences of a married English expatriate living in Saudi Arabia dealing with unwanted advances from a Muslim man. In the end she wonders at possible reasons for her lack of assertiveness, perhaps prescription drugs. This story was previously published in a magazine as memoir, so presumably it is based on the author's experience.

2. Comma is the recalling of the experiences from childhood of snooping in rich people's yards by two children. They discover a child who is apparently deformed, and it zooms to years later, and exploration of the differences in social economic levels and outcomes.

3. The Long QT is a story of a husband contemplating an affair, is annoyed by his wife's presence, and suddenly and unexpectedly is freed from her because an undiagnosed heart condition.

4. Winter Break is a haunting story of a young married couple who unwittingly become party to a murder by ignoring the obvious in order to keep the occurrence from ruining their vacation.

5. Harley Street is the story of a receptionist who snoops in all the happenings in a doctor's office. Is it possible that all the patients are vampires?

6. Offenses Against a Person is the story of a seventeen year-old girl who watches as her father divorces her mother for a younger woman, only to repeat his behavior with another younger woman.

7. How Shall I Know You? A writer visiting an isolated community on a book promotion tour spends the night in an inn from hell. She meets a deformed maid for whom she feels so sorry so gives her a twenty-pound tip. Months later the writer herself is the recipient of a similar tip causing her to wonder which of her own flaws elicited the gesture. (A published writer with unpleasant health symptoms—could be autobiographic?)

8. The Heart Fails Without Warning is story of a girl suffering from anorexia who dies of a weakened heart, and then serves as a metaphor for her own family, which is weakening from a metaphorical heart.

9. Terminus is the story of a young man attempting to track down the ghost of his father on a train, only to realize that in the end, no matter where people travel, or what they do in life, everyone is headed for a terminus of some kind, with the ultimate terminal being death.

10. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher provides the title to the book's title. The narrative tells about a woman’s apartment being taken over by an IRA assassin who plans to kill the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Is the woman helping him, or is she conning him? (There was a historical assassination attempt in 1984, but differed from this story.)

[Dessislava · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 оценка

Първи опит с Хилари Мантел - крайно успешен. Мисля, че самата аз не очаквах тази книга да ме впечатли толкова много, защото по принцип по-трудно се привързвам от разкази. Но "Убийството на Маргарет Тачър" ме грабна още с втората история.
Разказите са мистериозни, психологически, леко плашещи и в същото време логични, последователни, хомогенни и абсолютно реалистични. Въпреки това читателят остава на едно гранично пространство между "наистина ли" и "как би могло", където се развива сюжетът на някои от историите.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories by Hilary Mantel. All but the title story has been published before, but it is nice to have them gathered together in a single volume. As always, Mantel writes beautifully and draws readers into big themes through the domestic or every day. The book begins with “Sorry to Disturb,” which looks back to her time in Saudi Arabia, basis of her novel, “Eight Months on Ghazzah Street.” This is undoubtedly my favourite story in the collection; the strange tale of a knock on her door by a Pakistani businessman and his infuriating habit of seeking her out. Mantel’s time in Saudi Arabia was not a happy time for her and you get a sense of her helplessness, as she feels trapped in her apartment, unable to deal with events that normally would not pose a problem.

There are stories of childhood, of longing for children, marriage, adultery, anorexia and visiting a literary society. There is no padding in this book, which begins well and finishes brilliantly, with the excellent, “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.” This ties into the first story, where Mantel listens to the BBC World Service as Thatcher is elected and ends with her imagined assassination. This is a fascinating collection and each story is beautifully realised, reminding us of what a master of her craft Mantel is.

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 3 out of 5]

São três estrelas muito forçadas... Senti-me perdida no meio destes contos. Reconheço a força da escrita e a pertinência dos temas abordados e senti pena pelos desenlaces tão abruptos e sem sentido. Talvez tente um romance da autora.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone described this book as bringing a gun to a swordfight, and there is something in that: Here's Mantel, (finally deservedly) absurdly famous and universally renowned for constructing an entire culture, world, century in those doorstopper tomes, writing little short stories about the dark,off-kilter corners of (usually) women's and girls' lives.

But don't worry, it works. These are great short stories, as perfect in miniature as Cromwell is in Tudor-supersize. I especially liked Harley Street and the title story, but the story of the anorexic sisters and also How Will I Know You? will haunt me for a good long time.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apesar de os finais destes onze contos não fazerem história, os inícios e os meios compensam pela narrativa absorvente e pelos temas pertinentes.

[Ralitsa Koleva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ревю: https://bloodyrosered.wordpress.com/2...

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where I got the book: my local library.

Ah, the slender volume of literary short stories! Such things have become a rarity in traditional publishing, but when the author is a double Man Booker winner there’s justification for padding them out with plenty of white space and title pages, choosing the most provocative title for the volume and putting a heavy advertising budget behind it. From the back matter I can see they were first published in journals and/or “best of” short story collections. I haven’t read one of those for decades—I find that my tolerance for the consciously literary has waned, and that now I prefer a more commercial style of fiction written to literary standards.

Thus we have a brief collection of Hilary Mantel short stories, written, I suspect, at various times of her life. They are mostly written in the first person. There are themes—chronic illness, childlessness, sterile marriages, death—that might or might not have an autobiographical origin. They range from the poignant (Comma) to the faintly humorous (The Long QT) to the darkly tragic (The Heart Fails Without Warning) to the puzzling (Terminus).

I liked How Shall I Know You best, I think, because of the unexpected bite of its ending, and the fact that it’s based on a slice of life of an obscure writer, forced to give talks at even more obscure literary societies. It’s a reminder that Hilary Mantel did her time before encountering success. I bet they put her up in decent hotels now.

I thought the title story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, was the weakest, which is a shame since it closes the book. All of the stories are English in the extreme—what do American readers make of them, I wonder?

Anyhow, I enjoyed the stories as a whole, and felt refreshed and oddly youthened by a read of the kind I’ve barely experienced since my late 20s. Compared to the way I felt about the two Cromwell books and, especially, A Place of Greater Safety, this volume was a sandwich compared to a banquet, but Mantel is an author whose work I definitely want to pursue.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delight to read, mood pieces, dark entertaining. Some stories were 4 star, some 3. But in every one the use of language sublime. She has a way of saying a state or a feeling that is nearly unique, IMHO. No trite words or cliché phrasing. Very English and yet understandable to others outside of her culture and place, oh YES. But in several places she seems to get lost in that very act of a direct metaphor, IMHO. Sometimes I don't understand her at all, but I would think it is possible she wants or needs a non-understanding? Hard to explain. Her youth stories are the best, IMHO, the ones that are highly autobiographical. I like much less the number that are more symbolic than descriptive.

I love the remark when she is not up to the "go" for the promotion of her book/ job saying "I just want to be fictionalized." So much easier than the bodily effort and physical for her. Indeed!