First published 2003
Hilary Mantel's wry and unsettling memoir opens with the death of her stepfather, a loss that stirs up unresolved ghosts from her past. Through a series of vivid vignettes, she takes us into the muffled consciousness of her 1950s childhood - a household rife with secrets, haunted by a mysterious fire, and upended by the arrival of a new sibling. As Mantel navigates convent school and teenage perplexity, she grapples with medical misunderstandings that leave her childless, the "ghosts of the unborn" now haunting her life as a writer.
Genres: autobiography, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Great Britain
Period: 20th century
224 pages · Hardcover · Henry Holt and Co.
Content warnings: infertility, medical-trauma, mental-illness