The giant, O’Brien
Hilary Mantel

Only one of the best known and most acclaimed authors in the UK and yet ripped limb from limb in our reactions to this book, which were many and various:

Appalling stereotyping of the Irish members of the cast, who could not be distinguished, the one from the other;

Complete disregard for the truth, despite basing the story on facts and real people – Spin Dr Hunter, Spin; I can smell the earth of your grave a-burning… as Hilary might have put it;

Denseness of the language, which although undoubtedly accomplished, made it hard to wade through – more like reading Beowulf than anything else;

All in all, as someone was wise enough to encapsulate it, a book that works as a treatise on storytelling and the versatility of language, but absolutely fails as a novel, no one giving a hoot about any of the characters apart perhaps from The Bitch, who had a terrible time – and yet even she, an illiterate peasant from Ireland who’d been a destitute prostitute from her youth onwards, manages to come out with a heartrending soliloquy about human nature and how fate is fate.

Oh dear.

Publication Information

Publisher: Fourth Estate
ISBN: 9781857028867