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The Assassination Of Margaret Thatcher (2014)

by Hilary Mantel(Favorite Author)

3.52 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

4th Estate

review 1: A collection of ten short stories that make you realize how much the author must be reining herself in when she writes historical fiction about Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell. These are not horror stories, but they are nightmarish and very unsettling, each of them with an air of menace that never quite materializes. There are also occasional flashes of very mordant humor. The first story (one of the best) is typical: a young British wife living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at home alone, mysteriously ill and taking drugs which possibly make her worse, trying to write, constantly spraying for cockroaches, sweltering in the heat, responds to a sudden knock on the door of her apartment and lets in a Pakistani businessman who claims to need to use the phone. Who he really is and w... morehat his real history might be are never clear; but the strange relationship goes on for the rest of the story. Things are wrong, the situation is wrong, the feel is wrong, and they can't easily be made right. The previous tenant of her apartment had been a bachelor, probably an American, who had left abruptly after saying "Hi" to a couple of closely shrouded women coming down the stairs. There had been a complaint, "and he vanished." Not exactly a sinister way to put it, not explicitly horrible, but unsettling. The sense of not knowing the rules, always being slightly off-key, an indefinable misunderstanding--all these seem to be at play in all these very memorable stories.
review 2: I don't read short stories very often, and am reminded of how enjoyable they are whenever I do. This is a great collection of smart stories that run the gamut of marriage, love, death, sex, class, and politics as themes. All set in the era of Thatcher, and several seemingly autobiographical, they capture snapshots of universal human experiences like "seeing" one's dead relative, childhood betrayal by a friend, and fear and attraction of the unknown. Superbly marvelous....Mantel is getting a great deal of accolades of late having won the Man Booker Prize twice for her Wolf Hall trilogy. I agree that she is a formidable and highly readable talent. These tales will stay with readers for a good time after turning the last page, and to me that is the benchmark of a great short story. less

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