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Title details for A Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary Mantel - Wait list

A Memoir of My Former Self

A Life in Writing

by Hilary Mantel
Anne Enright
Audiobook
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A Memoir of My Former Self reveals the shape of Hilary Mantel's life in her own dazzling words, narrated by a prestigious cast of actors and notable literary figures connected to Hilary's work.
From her unique childhood to her all-consuming fascination with Thomas Cromwell that grew into the Wolf Hall Trilogy, Hilary Mantel had a celebrated career as a novelist. Alongside this, she long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. This strand of Hilary's writing was an integral part of how she thought of herself. '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.
Mantel's subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping 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 she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia. Here, too, is a selection of her film reviews - from When Harry Met Sally to RoboCop - and, published for the first time, her stunning Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life.
Compelling, often very funny, always luminous, it is essential listening from one of our greatest writers.
Voiced by Ben Miles, Lydia Leonard and Aurora Dawson-Hunte; all of whom have featured in stage adaptions of Hilary's work. With contributions from actress Jane Wymark, narrator of Hilary's memoir Giving up the Ghost. Readings from authors Anne Enright; the first Laureate for Irish Fiction and winner of the 2007 Booker Prize, and Sarah Waters; British Book Award Author of the Year and two-time Booker Prize nominee. Joining the cast are Hilary's long-time literary agent Bill Hamilton and her publisher for nearly twenty years, Nicholas Pearson.
'A smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature' - Margaret Atwood
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  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 1, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781004146352
      • File size: 442670 KB
      • Duration: 15:22:13

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 25, 2023
      In this dazzling posthumous collection of previously published and original writings, novelist Mantel (1952–2022; Wolf Hall) submits herself to the “constant state of self-questioning” she deems characteristic of any worthwhile history or fiction. Divided into five sections and dated with timestamps spanning from 1987 to 2018, these pieces see Mantel interrogating her primary genre (“The task of historical fiction is to take the past out of the archive and relocate it in the body”); casting a sharp critical eye on films from RoboCop to When Harry Met Sally (“People sometimes like to have their intimate dilemmas presented to them in terms that are slick and witty and bittersweet instead of just bitter”); analyzing the works of women authors (“Everything in work attests to a long practice of keen observation, a hoarding of images and facts”); detailing transformative moments from her own life (“This is the day I met my stepfather. I am four now. My head is slightly too big for my body. The inside of it is bulging with knowledge”); and providing a window into her writing process, through which she attempted to achieve a “relationship with language that is clean, unflawed.” Mantel’s idiosyncratic and magisterial voice comes through on every page, carrying readers across an astonishing array of subject matter with ease. This is a treasure.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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