Author | Hilary Mantel |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Literary fiction |
Publisher | Viking Books (UK) Owl Books (US) |
Publication date | 31 March 1994 (UK) 15 July 1997 (US) [1] |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | |
Pages | 352 pp (UK) 336 pp (US) |
ISBN | 9780670830510 (UK) 9780805052053 (US) |
A Change of Climate is a novel by English author Hilary Mantel, first published in 1994 by Viking Books. At the time The Observer described it as the best book she had written. [2] It was published in the United States in 1997 by Henry Holt and was recognised byThe New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of that year. The novel has also been identified as one of the best of the 1990s. [3]
A Change of Climate is set in Norfolk in 1980, and concerns Ralph and Anna Eldred, parents of four children, whose family life threatens to disintegrate in the course of one summer, when memories which they have repressed fiercely for twenty years resurface to disrupt the purposive and peaceful lives they have tried to lead since a catastrophic event overtook them early in their married life. The action of the novel moves back to the late 1950s, when they worked for a missionary society in a dangerous and crowded South African township, and then follows the couple to Bechuanaland, where in the loneliness of a remote mission station an unspeakable loss occurs. The novel is about the possibility or impossibility of forgiveness, the clash of ideals and brutality, and the need to acknowledge that lives are broken before they can begin to be mended.
Mantel states that the idea for the book came in two parts. In Botswana in 1977 she read law reports about medicine murders and the theft of children; later she heard of an 'apparently happily married couple who suddenly split up after doing all the hard work of bringing up a family'. Mantel brought these two parts of the story together to form the novel. She goes on to reveal that the novel was the most difficult she had ever written (as of 2010) as she struggled with its formal plot and structure. [4]
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Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
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Hound Music by English author Rosalind Belben has been described by The Atlantic Companion to Literature as a 'fine historical novel. Published in 2001 by Chatto and Windus it is set at the beginning of the twentieth century in rural England and concerns fox-hunting.