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Hilary Mantel’s newest book, a collection of short stories titled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, has been getting quite a bit of press. It seems many people have decided to take offense at the titular story in which an IRA assassin tricks a woman into letting him into her apartment which has a perfect view, and perfect shot of the back of a hospital through which Thatcher will shortly be exiting. The woman at first is alarmed but ends up being sympathetic and helps the man by showing him an escape route through which he might be able to get away without capture. The story ends just before the gun is fired.
It’s a pretty good story. We are left wondering whether the assassination was successful. Well, we know it wasn’t, don’t we? Mantel isn’t out to rewrite history. So the shot was missed for some reason. We are left to wonder at the aftermath, left feeling sympathetic for the IRA man who fully expects to get caught but shows the utmost concern for the woman whose apartment he took over. And the woman? She’s middle-aged, single, tidy, reliable, caught in the habits of her daily life and not one to rock the boat. But this man gives her a chance to break free from the ordinary without much risk and she takes it. You can read the story yourself if you haven’t already.
Unfortunately all the talk about the one story has overshadowed the rest of the book. Most of these stories are complete stories with beginnings, middles and ends, no brief slice of life stuff that just goes for mood or effect, things happen in these stories. Whether it is an English woman living in Dubai with her husband for his job who inadvertently finds herself being courted by another man or a husband caught kissing a neighbor in the kitchen by his wife the shock of which actually causes his wife to die from an unknown heart defect, the stories feel complete.
Then there is the story “Comma” about two young girls, about twelve. The one who narrates, Kitty, lives in a solid, middle-class household. Her friend, Mary Joplin, who lives just across the street, is from a family of dubious status. But Kitty is friends with Mary and the pair slip away from the parental gaze to go wandering through the surrounding neighborhood. Mary discovers the house of a rich family across a field. At this house they have something that should be a baby but there is something wrong with it. Our narrator and Mary sneak over and spy to try and figure out what the adults refuse to talk about. And while we think the story is about this baby it is really about the relationship between our narrator and Mary and then finally on Mary’s low-class status and how that ultimately affects her life. We catch a glimpse of the two in middle age, Kitty recognizing Mary on the street one day:
It passed through my mind, you’d need to have known her well to have known her now, you’d need to have put in the hours with her, watching her sideways. Her skin seemed swagged, loose, and there was nothing much to read in Mary’s eyes. I expected, perhaps, a pause, a hyphen, a space where a question might follow . . . Is that you Kitty? She stooped over her buggy, settled her laundry with a pat, as if to reassure it. Then she turned back to me and gave me a bare acknowledgement: a single nod, a full stop.
Or the story “Winter Break” in which a husband and wife on a winter holiday, riding through the night in a taxi to their distant hotel are disturbed when the car hits something. The driver bundles it up in a tarp and puts it in the trunk. The couple think it is a goat which they have seen running around everywhere. But they discover something else when they reach their destination.
These stories are about normal people in their everyday lives. Husbands and wives, friends, coworkers, getting on as best they can, scared, alone, confused, making mistakes, trying to figure things out. The most exotic person is a writer in the story “How Shall I Know You?” who is invited by a book group to visit and give a talk. And while the story seems to be all about the writer, like “Comma” it ends up being about something else. Something bigger, that lifts it up from the ordinary to the extraordinary, if not for the characters in the story, at least for the reader who gets to see the big picture.
I’ve only ever read Mantel’s Cromwell books so I was expecting some interesting narrative stylings in the stories. But they are all pretty straightforward. I was not disappointed by that because I don’t need stylistic dazzling in my short stories; they aren’t long enough for me to get used to something unusual and by the time I’d get my bearings I’m afraid the story would be over and I’d be wondering what just happened. This is not to say that Mantel’s style is plain. She uses various structural elements that we are all familiar with: flash backs, foreshadowing, story breaks that indicate the passage of time. What I really liked about many of these stories is that often they were about something other than I initially thought they were about. And those moments in the story when I realized there was something else going on were very pleasurable.
So don’t be put off from this collection by all the press and all the controversy over the titular story. These stories are good reading.
Maybe I’ll pick this up when it comes to the library.
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Jeanne, if you do, I hope you enjoy it!
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Not a big fan of Margaret Thatcher but feel a bit queasy about a story semi-sympathetic to her assassination. I like short stories but do feel that they are best enjoyed in magazines or in anthologies by various authors – although there are exceptions to this with the likes of William Trevor or Alice Munro. I will get around th reading these (and I think there is another collection of Mantel’s stories in print).
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Ian, but feeling queasy is good, isn’t it? It gets you out of a comfort zone and makes you think about things a bit more. I don’t really spend much time thinking about short stories, they are not my first choice to read even in magazines and anthologies. But it seems I have been spending lots of time with them lately, first Willa Cather, then ghost stories and now Mantel. Soon I will have Atwood’s story collection in my hands. I’m not sure that all this story reading is turning me into a fan, but for the most part, I’ve been enjoying them.
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I know that short stories are not enjoyed by many readers and I can see why because there are no shortage of uninspired examples out there but consider: Flannery O Connor, Tolstoy, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kafka, Alice Munro, DH Lawrence, Borges, MR James, Turgenev, William Trevor, Joyce, Katharine Mansfield, Eudora Welty, Flaubert….all wrote great short stories that are probably about as good as fiction can get.
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I love O’Connor, Mansfield, Joyce. I’ve read and enjoyed a few Bashevis Singer, Kafka, Lawrence and I have a Borges collection I started ages ago and read only one story but I loved it. But as good as those were/are, I still have a hard time being interested in short stories. I can’t even begin to say why.
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I love short stories and this sounds like a great collection–I’ve just put a request in for it from the library. I actually haven’t read anything about it until now (but then I never seem to be up to date on what’s going on in the reading world lately), but I like the sound even of the title story. I like interesting characters like that who even when doing something they aren’t meant to make you sympathetic towards them. Sounds like a great read–and yay for short stories!
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Danielle, I know you love short stories! You are me link to the genre, you keep them on my radar even if I don’t read them very often. You will find many interesting characters in this collection. I look forward to seeing what you make of it!
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Thanks for this lovely review, Stefanie. I hadn’t heard of this collection until BookerTalk wrote about it, and the controversy to which you refer. I’d be intrigued to read it from your review, though right now I’m a bit overwhelmed with short story collections. Having been to Dubai, I’d love to read that story as I don’t think I’ve read much that’s been set there.
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Whisperinggums, Thanks! I was so angry Mantel did short stories and not the last Cromwell book I had planned to not read the collection until it practically got dropped into my lap. The Dubai story is the lead story and odd, I thought, but good. It’s not the writing that’s odd, but the situation in the story. But it turns out, Mantel likes to write about normal people in odd or uncomfortable situations.
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That sounds a bit like Anne Tyler .. Though I suspect the oddness is different, is more odd?
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Mantel’s odd is not a quirky odd (for some reason I think of Tyler as being quirky) but odd more like unusual how-did-I get-here kinds of situations that upset one’s equilibrium.
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Yes, that makes sense. Tyler is quirky I think … Ordinary characters make odd decisions or do odd things.
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This I have to get…thanks for a great review…it’a a shame when one element of book gets highlighted to such an extent that the actual complete body of work is negelected and overlooked. I love her Cromwell Books and now I will add this one to my TBR
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cirtnecce, thanks! It is a shame that the book has been overshadowed by the one story. I hope when you read the book you like it!
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This is one collection of short stories that I shall have to read despite my aversion to the form because I read everything Mantel publishes. But when? I am going to retire from retirement – it’s far too busy!
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Alex, I was thinking of you while I read this and hoped that you might read it. I think it would fit well into your project and I bet you would enjoy the stories seeing as how they really are stories!
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Fascinating review, Stefanie. I will definitely be looking for the paperback of this collection. And as for the Margaret Thatcher story, isn’t fiction all about playing with what might have been or might yet be in a parallel world? It’s not a polemic, it’s a story – big difference. I really must squeeze in Bring Up The Bodies before the wave of SNB reading crashes over me again!
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Litlove, thanks! I’ve been surprised over how many people in the UK have been upset about the Margaret Thatcher story, even people who say they never liked Thatcher. It’s “only” a story, a what if, and well done, I thought. Oh yes, get to Bring Up the Bodies if you can. So good! Though I’ve heard the last one won’t be coming out until 2016 or some outrageously long time. Wah!
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I vastly prefer collections where the stories have distinct beginnings, middles, and ends. The slice-of-life ones are not for me. I’m probably going to start with the Cromwell books when I end up trying Hilary Mantel — I read one of her modern-day books and haaaaaated it, so I’m aiming to give her a second chance with a book where she’s in a completely different metier.
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Jenny, I am starting to figure out the slice-of-life thing is not for me either when it comes to stories. I like experimental novels quite a lot, but stories, give it to me straight. I hope you have better luck with Mantel if you try her Cromwell books. I have very much enjoyed them so far.
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