Mantelpieces

There's another excellent interview with Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, this time in The Independent with Boyd Tonkin. And on the same page there is a video of her reading from Wolf Hall which was filmed in my favourite bookshop - Daunt Books in London - so do have an oggle.

And the author has contributed an exclusive short story - The Heart Fails Without Warning - to The Guardian.

Postscript :

Robert McCrum sees similarities between Mantel and this week's Nobel prize winner, and salutes their hard work and dedication in the face of considerable adversity :

Müller suffered horribly under Ceaucescu, and her work has been shaped by political repression. Mantel's early adult life was blighted by a debilitating, undiagnosed illness. Müller committed herself to her writing in great privation and obscurity. Mantel laboured for years on a book (A Place of Greater Safety) that was repeatedly rejected, and finally shoved into a drawer before its belated publication in 1992. Now, after years of quiet dedication, both women have been fully recognised. This underlines a fundamental truism I have always believed about the book world: it's the work, not the life, that matters.

Bookies' Book Bags the Booker!

Just for once, the bookies favourite won! Hilary Mantel was awarded the 2009 Man Booker Prize last night for Wolf Hall, which is set in the 1520s and tells the story of Thomas Cromwell's rise to prominence in the Tudor court.

James Naughtie, chair of judges said :

Hilary Mantel has given us a thoroughly modern novel set in the 16th century. Wolf Hall has a vast narrative sweep that gleams on every page with luminous and mesmerising detail. ... It probes the mysteries of power by examining and describing the meticulous dealings in Henry VIII's court, revealing in thrilling prose how politics and history is made by men and women. ... In the words of Mantel's Thomas Cromwell, whose story this is, "the fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes."

Mantel is the first British winner of the Booker in 5 years. Of the £50,000 prize money, Mantel is quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying :

It's earnings. That may seem a very cold way of looking at a major award, but cost out what an author earns per hour and it's far, far less than the minimum wage. The return is not great. The money from prizes, welcome though it is, must be used to pay the mortgage.

Worth reading is this review of the novel by Janet Maslin in The New York Times. There's an interesting interview with Mantel up on the Booker website and another by Ada Edemariam in The Guardian. You can read the extract from the novel (which appeared in The New York Review of Books) here. You can also hear Nabtel talk about the book and read from it on the BBC website.

Mantel is Booker Frontrunner

Short of a bedroom imbroglio, what else can ever thrust an esteemed author of literary fiction onto the front pages?

Aberrant behaviour at the bookies it seems! There has been a huge rush of Booker wagers on just one of the longlisted author, Hilary Mantel. 95% of the bets have been for her novel Wolf Hall. Bookies William Hill said that it had never seen a betting pattern like it and slashed the odds on a win for Mantel's longlisted Wolf Hall from 12-1 right down to 2-1.

But of course, a Booker win for Mantel is not a dead-cert, says Boyd Tonkin at The Independent. And any Booker winner will know that the front-runner often fall long before the finish line. But says Tonkin :

Anyone who frets at this vulgar intrusion of cash and chance into the august enclosures of literature should read Wolf Hall at once. Closer in style and mood to Tom Wolfe than Walter Scott, Mantel's racy and rocketing account of Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power at the court of Henry VIII stitches a canny materialism deep into the fabric of the new, rational and businesslike, England that Cromwell did so much to create. Indeed, she takes care to specify one trait among the other qualities that make her Putney blacksmith's son such a stellar arbitrator, plotter, trader, deal-closer and all-round fixer for the crown. "He will take a bet on anything." And so will we.

It was the only Booker longlisted title I managed to find at Kinokuniya the other day (though I'm assured all the titles will be in soon) so I guess my Booker read starts here. Having enjoyed Beyond Black, I'm anticipating this read with great pleasure.

Mantel Piece

Blissful. Just relax in my planter's chair on the verandah, early morning sunlight washing the garden, mug of coffee in hand, and read and read. No guilt either because everyone's still on holiday.

This morning finished Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. A curious book. A comedy about ... the life beyond, child abuse ... the general crapness of modern day Britain. All things to laugh at, hey?

Alison is a clairvoyant, passing on banal messages from dead relatives to audiences in seedy venues in the South-East. But there's no trickery involved - Alison's the real thing. She even has a spirit guide: "a grizzled grinning apparition in a bookmaker’s check jacket and suede shoes with bald toe caps” who sits around making lewd remarks and fondling himself, unseen by anyone but Alison. The dead are as solidly drawn as the living in the novel and even a disorientated Princess Di turns up in Alison's hallway a few hours after passing over.

I felt great sympathy for Alison, increasingly under psychic attack from a group of men who abused her sexually and physically as a child, yet unable to share with anyone the true horror of what she sees in the world beyond.

Her self-styled "manager" Colette, is a deliciously awful character - prim, humourless and cold ... and the way she gets her come-uppance delighted me. (Guess whose grubby little sock turns up in her washing machine?)

But what I loved most about the book was Mantel's spot-on portrayal of an England I recognise all too well, in prose that sings. (Check out the first page.)

If you've read the book you will enjoy this podcast interview with Hilary Mantel at the Guardian website. And there's also her article about where the novel came from. I liked this:

Which other self-employed persons stand up in public to talk about non-existent people? Novelists, of course. We listen to non-existent voices and write down what they say. Then we talk with passion and conviction about people no one can see.