Title:
A memoir of my former self : a life in writing
Summary:
In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades. Her subjects are wide-ranging, sharply observed, and beautifully rendered. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life popping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels―revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England; and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V.S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health that she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia. Here, too, is her legendary essay “Royal Bodies,” on our endless fascination with the current royal family. From her unusual childhood to her all-consuming interest in Thomas Cromwell that grew into the Wolf Hall trilogy, A Memoir of My Former Self reveals the shape of Hilary Mantel’s life in her own luminous words, through “messages from people I used to be.” Filled with her singular wit and wisdom, it is essential reading from one of our greatest writers. -- Amazon.
Edition:
First U.S. edition.
Contents:
Part I: Once upon a life : On the one hand ; I once stole a book ; Exam fever ; Where do stories come from? ; Persons from Porlock ; Which bits of English history are my history? ; Blot, erase, delete ; Last morning in Al Hamra ; Night visions ; The palace revolutionary ; Meeting my stepfather ; Wicked parents in fairy tales ; A memoir of my former self ; Dreaming of pork and porn ; A doctor's diaries ; Holy disorders ; Written on our bodies ; Every part of my body hurts ; Once upon a life ; The princess myth ; On grief -- Part II: Writing in the dark : Outrage merchant: Prick up your ears ; Mad, bad and dangerous: Fatal attraction ; Good clean violence: RoboCop ; Sixties survivors: Withnail and I ; Not by bread alone: Babette's feast and Barfly ; Fallen angels: Wings of desire ; When sex began: Scandal ; Bittersweet treat: When Harry met Sally ; Unsentimental education: A short film about love ; Natural disaster: Sweetie ; Taking the Mickey: Wild orchid ; Happily ever after: Romauld et Juliette ; Don't take the vicar: Wild at heart ; In the company of savages: Goodfellas ; Polite young things: Metropolitan -- Part III: Turn the page : Not "everybody's Dear Jane": on Jane Austen ; Killer children: on Gitta Sereny ; Figures in a landscape: on Annie Proulx ; Conservative rebel: on Rebecca West ; A past recaptured: on Sybille Bedford ; Getting through: on John McGahern ; The right to life: on capital punishment ; Fashion queen: on Marie Antoinette ; Religion and the decline of magic: on Keith Thomas ; A book of the world: on V.S. Naipaul -- Part IV: The Reith lectures : The day is for leaving ; The Iron Maiden ; Silence grips the town ; Can these bones live? ; Adaptation -- Part V: The moon was a tender crescent : Bryant Park: a memoir ; Real books in imaginary houses ; A life of Biggles ; Nostalgic for disorder ; No passport required ; "How I became a writer" stories ; Female role novels ; Women over fifty: the Invisible Generation ; Elizabeth Jane Howard ; If the glance of a woman can sour cream ; At first sniff ; The joys of stationery ; The books I will never write ; On the right track ; The other king ; Anne Boleyn: witch, bitch, temptress, feminist ; How I cam to write Wolf Hall ; Unfreezing antique feeling ; A letter to Thomas More, knight ; Royal bodies ; Touching hands with the lost.
Physical Description:
xi, 419 pages ; 24 cm
Personal Subject:
Author(s):
Publisher:
Henry Holt and Company,
Publication Date:
2023
ISBN:
9781250342225
Publication Information:
New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2023.
©2023
Call Number:
824 MANTEL