Review of The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel

I began reading Hilary Mantel’s recent collection of short stories, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, with high expectations after loving her historical novels, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. These stories are far removed from the court intrigues of the 16th century. Most are set in bleak and trapped surroundings in 20th century England: dingy hotel rooms with brown, stained carpets; walk-up flats; middle class homes; and anonymous train stations. The narrators and those they observe seem trapped in a crabbed and jaundiced world, riven with pent-up want, isolation,and mundane misery. These are people whose ability to connect with others--whether family, friend or coworker--falls painfully short. Yet there are unexpected gestures of intimacy, for example when a daughter wordlessly attempts to repair a shattered dish, a symbol of her parents’ broken marriage. Or when a sister leaves small packets of foil-wrapped food for her hopelessly anorexic sibling. At times, these stories reminded me of Victorian ghost tales such as those penned by the wonderful Sheridan Le Fanu. Stories with a tinge of the supernatural and the awful. Stories with a twist at the end, that causes a sudden chill of recognition. The imprint of these stories is sharp, like the "blade of bone" that indents the palm of one of Mantel's characters: "When she had woken up next morning, the shape of it was still there in her mind."(189) Just so, the shape of these unsettling stories will remain with the reader.