The Present Tense

by Hilary Mantel

“Today we are going to have a nice lesson.” A short story by Hilary Mantel.

ebook

Published January 1, 2016

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

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Opening: ‘Today we are going to have a nice lesson,’ I say.

Twenty-nine faces, upturned: all dubious. I think, you don’t know how nice it will be, compared to the nasty lessons ahead. Next year is Cambridge Certificate, and we will have The Mill on the Floss till our brains bleed.

Read here

4* Wolf Hall
4* Bring Up the Bodies
WL The Mirror and the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)

2* The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
4* A Place of Greater Safety
1* Beyond Black
2* The Present Tense

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

You may read online at LondonReviewBooks.

Opening lines:
‘Today we are going to have a nice lesson,’ I say.

Twenty-nine faces, upturned: all dubious. I think, you don’t know how nice it will be, compared to the nasty lessons ahead. Next year is Cambridge Certificate, and we will have The Mill on the Floss till our brains bleed.

1* Beyond Black
3* The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
3* A Place of Greater Safety
3* The Present Tense

Thomas Cromwell Trilogy:
4* Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
4* Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
TR The Mirror and the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)

[Dorianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

*read for school*

[Francine · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Gelezen in het Nederlands.)

Het duurde even voor ik erin zat, in het begin is het een beetje vaag waar het zich afspeelt en wat de circumstances zijn. Maar dat einde blijft je wel bij, hoor. Jeetje.

[Eavan]

What the fuck.