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At no. 58 the top of my head comes to the outermost curve of my great-aunt, Annie Connor. Her shape is like the full moon, her smile is beaming; the outer rim of her is covered by her pinny, woven with tiny flowers. It is soft from washing; her hands are hard and chapped; it is barely ten o'clock and she is getting the cabbage on. 'Hello, Our Ilary,' she says; my family has named me aspirationally, but aspiration doesn't stretch to the 'H'.Giving Up the Ghost is award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel's wry, shocking and uniquely unusual five-part autobiography of childhood, ghosts, illness and family.It opens in 1995 with 'A Second Home', in which Mantel describes the death of her stepfather, a death which leaves her deeply troubled by the unresolved events of childhood. 'Now Geoffrey Don't Torment Her' begins in typical, gripping Mantel fashion: 'Two of my relatives have died by fire.' Set during the 1950s, it takes the reader into the muffled consciousness of her early childhood, culminating with the birth of a younger brother and the strange candlelit ceremony of her mother's 'churching'. In 'The Secret Garden' Mantel moves to a haunted house and mysteriously gains a stepfather. When she is almost eleven, her family flee the gossips and the ghosts, and resolve to start a new life. 'Smile' is an account of teenage perplexity, in a household where the keeping of secrets has become a way of life. Convent school provides a certain sanctuary, with tacit assistance from the fearsome 'Top Nun.' In the final section, the author tells how, through medical misunderstandings and neglect, she came to be childless, and how the ghosts of the unborn, like chances missed or pages unturned, have come to haunt her life as a writer.
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Previews available in: Undetermined English
Subjects
Chronic pain, English Novelists, Family, Patients, Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Childhood and youth, Biography, Authors, biography, Authors, english, Large type books, New York Times reviewed, Romanciers anglais, Biographies, Douleur chronique, Autobiographical fictionPeople
Hilary Mantel (1952-)Places
Great BritainTimes
20th centuryEdition | Availability |
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Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir
Nov 07, 2017, Picador Modern Classics
hardcover
1250160669 9781250160669
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Giving Up the Ghost
Apr 01, 2012, Whole Story Audiobooks
audio cd
in English
1407499343 9781407499345
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Giving up the ghost: a memoir
2005, BBC Audiobooks/Chivers, Thorndike Press
in English
0786272171 9780786272174
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Giving Up the Ghost
June 7, 2004, HarperPerennial
Paperback
- New Ed edition
0007142722 9780007142729
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Giving Up the Ghost : A Memoir (John MacRae Books)
August 12, 2004, Picador
Paperback
in English
0312423624 9780312423629
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Giving up the ghost: a memoir
2003, Henry Holt
in English
- 1st American ed.
0805074724 9780805074727
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16 |
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"A John Macrae book."
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- Created April 1, 2008
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