Giving Up the Ghost

A Memoir

Hilary Mantel

Picador

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In postwar rural England, Hilary Mantel grew up convinced that the most improbable of accomplishments, including "chivalry, horsemanship, and swordplay," were within her grasp. Once married, however, she acquired a persistent pain that led to destructive drugs and patronizing psychiatry, ending in an ineffective but irrevocable surgery. There would be no children; in herself she found instead one novel, and then another.

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GIVING UP THE GHOSTIt is a Saturday, late July 2000; we are in Reepham, Norfolk, at Owl Cottage. There’s something we have to do today, but we are trying to postpone it. We need to go across the road to see Mr. Ewing; we need to ask for a valuation, and see what they think of our chances of selling. Ewing’s is the local firm, and it was they who sold us the house, seven years ago. As the morning wears on we move around each other silently, avoiding conversation. The decision’s made.

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Praise for Giving Up the Ghost

"Dazzlingly written...a highly unorthodox account of what is essentially unsayable about the inward uncharted life."--Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
"The matter is bitter, but Mantel's angular wit is as unquenchable as her anger; the reading experience is reliably exhilarating because of the sheer excellence of the writing."--New York Times Book Review
"Blazing insights [and] poetic discourses that rattle the soul...Mantel doesn't simply hit close to home, she knocks at our closets and opens our doors."--The Boston Globe
"Mantel's talents are stronger than her misfortunes...[this book comes] from the mind of a fine author, whose body has imposed its own terrible penances."--The Washington Post

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About the Author

Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel is the author of Wolf Hall, winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize. She is also the author of A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, and Vacant Possession. She has also written a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Winner of the Hawthornden Prize, she reviews for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. She lives in England.

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Available Formats and Book Details

Giving Up the Ghost
A Memoir
Hilary Mantel

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
Picador
September 2004
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780312423629
ISBN10: 0312423624
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 240 pages
$16.00
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Hardcover

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Hardcover
Henry Holt and Co.
A John Macrae Book
October 2003
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780805074727
ISBN10: 0805074724
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches,
$23.00

e-Book Agency

Learn more about this edition
e-Book Agency
Henry Holt and Co.
A John Macrae Book
September 2004
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9781429900652
ISBN10: 1429900652
240 pages
$9.99
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