A Change of Climate

by Hilary Mantel

A CHANGE OF CLIMATE [Paperback] Mantel, Hilary

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, British Literature, Audiobook

342 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Hilary Mantel was the bestselling author of many novels including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Wolf Hall Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She also wrote 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, Vacant Possession, and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Praveen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Forgetting is an art like other arts, It needs dedication and practice."

The title of the first page of this book is 'SAD CASES, GOOD SOULS' 1970' and just below it on the left corner of the page, I had written, in feeble black, by a graphite pencil, a date on which I started reading this novel. It is 12 September 2012, and after that it is written 'to desert', again by me using the same pencil.

I remember, I had bought this novel just before my train journey to the desert land of India and most part of this book was read by me during that journey.
This is a well written novel, indeed a very well written. I had moved ahead with this novel due to its exquisite writing style.

I am writing this review today because after rereading In a Free State, a few days ago, the plot of this novel flashed in my mind because a part of it is also set there in Africa like that of 'In a free state.'

This entire story moves around the theme of "good souls and bad cases". It's an intelligent novel with the family saga of Ralph and his wife Anna Eldred.
They live in England but later move to Africa as missionaries, not as religious one but for doing some good work only.

Their difficulties in the South Africa and then their getting drawn into the politics there and getting engaged in the constant conflict has been perfectly woven in words by Mantel. There happens,with the family such things which ultimately shape their rest of life.

The characters of novel are made really strong. Apart from Anna and Ralph, their son is strongly portrayed. Emma, sister of Ralph, who is unmarried but is having an affair with a married man, is also a character with command. When her lover Felix dies, she goes to a shrine,there is, a vast book in the porch, its pages ruled into columns. A notice promises there. "All whose names are inscribed in the book will be prayed for at the shrine." But She does not write her name or name of her lover, rather she puts down the name of Ralph and his family !

Then returning from there, lines of poetry run through her head, those are insistent lines, stuffed with a crude menace.


" The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
  The desert sighs in the bed,
  And the crack in the tea-cup opens
  A lane to the land of the dead."

This book leaves us with some very difficult questions.
Questions about faith and betrayal !
Questions about injustice and bereavement !

I loved the way this book is written, in quite an impactful and elegant manner ! 

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens to a family when they allow the bigger world and especially its injustices into their lives. The timeline of this novel shifts back and forth. It begins in the present when husband Ralph Elsted is director of a religious charitable trust and his wife Anna has a weak heart. Quickly we are plunged back into the past when Ralph is at war with his puritanical and dogmatic father. To escape Ralph accepts a post in a church-funded mission house in a South African township. This is 1955 when the apartheid government has passed a law forbidding education to black children. Ralph and Anna quickly get into trouble with the South African authorities. This section of the novel is particularly accomplished. Eventually they are arrested and then deported to a remote corner of the world - Bechuanaland. It's here that Ralph and Anna undergo the pivotal moment of their lives (Mantel does a fabulous job of withholding this mystery at the same time as creating bags of tension around it).
I was fully invested in this beautifully written and constructed novel from start to end. To my mind, along with Ali Smith, Hilary Mantel is the best living female British novelist.

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complex and bleak novel, replete with Mantel’s trademark black humour and finely crafted sentences. There’s also a fair amount of character establishment before the reader can fully absorb ‘A Change of Climate’s intricacies, with its concealed entrances and unexpected plot twists, but certainly worth the perseverance.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book partly due my love of Hilary Mantel (based around her simply outstanding Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies/The Mirror and The Light trilogy of novels and equally outstanding plays but also due to its setting in Norfolk.

I purchased the book (together with a number of other Norfolk themed books) from the excellent North Norfolk independent Bookshop – Holt Bookshop (https://www.holtbookshop.co.uk/) only a few miles from Foulsham (the home of one of the protagonists – Emma Eldred) and Blakeney (the home of her long-time lover Felix Palmer – whose funeral opens the story).

The book centres around a married couple – Ralph and Anna Elsted and their family: parents (one set of parents from Swaffham where I went to sixth form, the other from East Dereham where my grandmother lived) sibling (the aforementioned Emma is Ralph’s sister), their children (who are crucial to the book) and their extended family. By the latter I am referring to a group who seem to flit in and out of the large sprawling but run-down house the Eldred’s occupy in the North Norfolk countryside – a group divided by them into Good Souls and Sad Cases.

For the Eldred’s regard themselves as “professional Christians” – Ralph a very hands on director of a Christian Charitable trust (a position he inherited form family connections), the trust running a refuge centre in London but also a variety or projects in Norfolk, with Ralph using his home to offer a respite break to both volunteers (the good souls) and clients of the charity (the sad cases), rather to the neglect of his own family.

Neither Ralph and Anna have an obvious faith anymore – their own faith which was always of a more inherited family (Ralph from a strict family whose father highly disapproved of his teenage interest in ancient geology; Anna from a family made rich from Christian publishing) shaken by a terrible incident which occurred when they were in the Southern African protectorate of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) – having been sent there after the apartheid government of South Africa expelled them from their mission posting in 1955 as they were seen as too sympathetic to black political causes.

Much of the story is set years later in present day Norfolk as various people come to terms with their present and past: Emma (and Felix’s wife) with Felix’s death; Ralph with the realisation that he was the last person to find out about the affair; Ralph and Felix’s two oldest children with making decisions about their future (decisions which largely consist of deciding to come back from London to Norfolk – one to restart a relationship with Felix’s upper-end estate agent son, the other to start a relationship with a girl from Blakeney); and most of all Ralph and Anna with their marriage and the shadow the events of the past cast over it (events we explore in lengthy flashbacks to South Africa and Bechuanaland)

I have to say that the local colour of Norfolk was excellent – and much stronger than I had expected (I had assumed the setting a largely notional one) – for example as someone who grew up in the Brecklands, who lived in one of the bungalows mentioned as having repopulated the villages surrounding Swaffham in the post year wars, and who at school spent many a Saturday looking for Roman Samian Ware pottery and knapped-flints among the Brecks fields) I rather enjoyed …….

The Eldred family belonged to the country which is called the Brecklands; it is a country bounded by chalk and peat, but covered by a mantle of shifting sand. Its open fields are strewn with flint …. Edged by fir trees twisted into fantastic forms. It is a country of flint-knappers and warreners; latterly of archaeologists and military personnel … The Romans have left their coins … and their fragments of terracotta; the military have set their huts and wire fences among the ruins of monasteries ..

I also realised that as the book progressed its setting (a remote house – with nearest market town Reepham, walkable (at some length) from Bawdeswell and with characters very familiar with a ruined barn in Wood Dalling which one of the characters (an estate agent) is sizing up for a barn conversion – is very close to my own converted barn a mile or so from Wood Dalling and just out of Reepham.

But what struck me most was Mantel’s competence as a novelist – she commands a sweeping and wide ranging (in both setting and theme) story with great ease – if I had any criticism it is perhaps that she does not really capture so well character distinction and that he portrayal of faith itself is weak. But overall a very enjoyable novel.

[Anastasia Hobbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my new favorite Mantel (every one of her books becomes my favorite right after I read it). One of her non-historical novels, it's set in 1970's Apartheid S. Africa and in England in the 1990's. Almost anything I say of the plot is too much, so I'll say very little: A young missionary couple goes to S. Africa in the seventies and something almost unspeakably horrifying happens to them there. Like the good Britons they are, they come back to the UK with the past buried deep. But twenty years and several kids later, it resurfaces and sunders the couple in a heart-breaking way. Toward the end of this spare, beautiful novel (almost no one writes with the powerful economy Mantel has mastered), I couldn't imagine how she was going to end the story, how she could possibly draw it to a satisfying finish. But she does. I finished the book one afternoon in a hotel as my husband and I were waiting around for one activity or another around a family wedding. We were both reading quietly, and I turned the final page. Mantel's concluding paragraphs hit me like a physical blow in the chest, and tears sprang to my eyes, alarming my husband. I'm still in amazement. I'd seen all Mantel's threads, and as a writer myself, I'd tried to follow her flow of thought, her planning of the novel--and failed. The most amazing thing is that, now, the ending feels inevitable. How could it have ended any other way?

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Change Of Climate centers around a Norfolk family, Ralph and Anna Elsted, their parents and their four children. It flips backward and forward in time--from 1980 in Norfolk to the late 1950s where the setting shifts to missionaries in Elim (outside of Pretoria, South Africa) and Bechuanaland (corresponding to present day Botswana). We know it is after 1953 since the Bantu Education Act had been passed. This law legalized aspects of the apartheid system and enforced racially separated schools. It had the effect of imposing illiteracy on the non-white population.

The parents are dedicated to philanthropic work. Why, is an essential part of the novel, as is the parents’ zealous need to “do good”. One can ask, at the cost to whom?

The mother and father guard a secret, an event in their past that has marked them and shaped them into who they are. Another book about family secrets.

The beginning is confusing. Why? Mantel wants to create suspense and a sense of mystery. At the start we meet a multitude of characters. None are introduced. We surmise that we are at a funeral, but whose? Only much later can a reader possibly grasp what has occurred or how one character is related to another. Suspense is enhanced by one crisis being heaped on another. A crisis arises--objects are stolen, a dog is killed and then there is, of course, also a violent storm. The tension mounts, you want to know more, but what does Mantel do? She switches the time frame. I dislike being played with in this manner.

The beginning is slow and confusing. At the middle the story picks upn speed. At the end it drags again. The ending is just too schmaltzy for me. Too over-done. Mantel lays everything on too thick, and this is so not just at the end.

I did not come to feel for the characters.

There are too many elements to the story. It does not hold together as it should. One is given at least three different stories—the long awaited, climactic events in Africa, an attempted suicide of a teenage delinquent, a midlife crisis and an adulterous affair. Do one story well rather than taping together three.

The narration is performed by Sandra Duncan. It was fine. Not hard to follow and read at a good speed. A bit too over-dramatized for my taste. Several times Emma sounded like Anna and vice versa, but you know by the context who it had to have been. The narration I have given three stars.

The book is not terrible, but merely OK.

[Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steamy hot July and after rather a downturn in a long line of books read, I come across two sizzling 5 stars in a row. This particular one? Only my reaction, as I can not begin to imply the depth of the plots and the twining of characterizations. Complex all- and also in two geographical locations. Norwich in England and South Africa, both during the middle of the last century in the decades following WWII.

Rarely, rarely do masters in words, enclose you within a dichotomy of the perception and worldview another can have. Completely. And more so how that quality derives from a parent or can fall habit to a grandchild. And yet all is actually of "a piece" despite their psyches seemingly being from oppositional poles of actions and lifestyle. So we become our mothers or our fathers, particularly if we are still reacting to their outlooks and mores- even if it is in rejecting or reversed priority reaction.

Hilary Mantel is a genius. She is one of two absolutely tops British gems in understanding and writing human nature and motivation. The other is Jane Gardam. I am a BIG fan of Hilary Mantel and will read all she writes. I knew what she could do for Cromwell, but I had little idea what depth she reads in the common good man. And good woman.

Read this book. It is doubly important in this particular era when the Sad Cases and the Good Souls are so cored and eminent in "feel good" media. And where is the priority in action to the help for the more self-starting and deserved of initiative? Or priority to those to whom love has been promised, not just accepted and expected.

So many issues raised in this story in which a strong belief in work or religion or any dogma can obscure personal relationship or, over time, bury it. Work/career does that for so many moderns.

Hilary Mantel and Jane Gardam should be given the honor of being titled before they pass. We will not see their insight and precise placements of emotion with full intelligent wit in such human histories every decade. This depth is rare. Age has just made them so much more than better- they are perfect masters of writing the human reality and heart.

This is Hilary's best.

If you love this book, read right after "A Land More Kind than Home" by Wiley Cash. They have immense parallels and it speaks to the man's heart in this Change of Climate. Gives even a better male voice to the role this protagonist Ralph has taken for himself in Mantel's "Climate". Female comparisons are also apt, but it is in an entirely different part of the world. Circumstance of marriage relationship, not all that different at all.

[Fionnuala]

This is a good story with some important themes. It is nicely plotted and satisfactorily concluded and the characters are well drawn. I wish I hadn't chosen to listen to it as an audio book though because I feel I missed a lot and I was sidetracked continually by the tone of voice and variety of accents used by the reader which completely dominated the story, particularly influencing my reactions to the characters. The reader chose to use a fragile, pathetic sounding tone for the main character and so it was difficult to identify with her and yet she was an incredibly strong character who deserved our empathy. There was a similar problem with some of the other female characters. I might reread it later when I've forgotten the intricacies of the plot.

[Nigeyb · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Change of Climate (1994) moves back and forth between present and past, Norfolk and Africa, and centres on Ralph and Anna, a married couple who have dedicated their lives to philanthropic work. Ralph and Anna also have a dark secret, never openly discussed, which is at the heart of the novel.

The structure is frustrating and a little confusing, and I was never fully engaged. The ending tries too hard to tie up all the loose ends.

The first Hilary Mantel novel that failed to hit the target for me. It's good. Obviously. Just not up to the usual standard.

3/5

[Ярослава]

Мені подобається, як авторка раз у раз створює геть інші очікування, про що буде цей роман - і щоразу їх порушує.
Це буде роман про почуття, звичаї й подружні зради в провінційній Англії 90-х. Ні, це буде соціальний роман про співіснування середнього класу і проблемних нижчих прошарків, і головною героїнею буде не та, на кого ми думали спершу, а її небожі й небоги, діти батьків-соцробітників, що ростуть, мов той бур'ян. Ні, це буде роман про тих самих батьків-соцробітників - а ще про колоніальну спадщину Англії, бо в юності, в 1970-ті, вони в розпал апартеїду приїхали в Південну Африку місіонерами. Насправді роман про це все потроху, а чіткого центру в нього начебто немає, бо в центрі лежить unspeakable травма, яку всі обходять по периметру, боячись туди провалитися.

“Nothing in their lives had prepared them for catastrophe. They worshipped routine; events were dubious matters, and often in bad taste. It was a form of showing off, to have things happen to you.”

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no doubt about it - Hilary Mantel is an immensely talented, even brilliant, writer. The way she expresses thoughts and feelings in language is unusual, moving, and beautiful.

A Change of Climate doesn't even compare to Wolf Hall. It's an earlier book, focused on a smaller story, and concerned with personalities far less interesting than Thomas Cromwell.

At times the story reminded me of Fall on Your Knees (though I admit it's been decades since I read that book) in terms of being a dark family drama populated by a tight-knit, large family of four siblings, their parents, aunts, grandparents, and also Little Bee ( known in the UK by the title The Other Hand), for the element of Brits abroad in Africa on whom a terrible criminal act is performed, and how they recover from it.

This book is difficult; twisty; dark; the family suffers hardships and in their line of work (operating a charitable trust for down-and-out people, recovering [or still using] drug addicts, runaways, the poor) encounter difficult people. They themselves are not an easy family to love. The book at times seems to be saying something about the great and unbearable need of people, and to ask the question: is a lifetime spent trying to provide for that need - even with the smallest possible acts of assistance and kindness - worthwhile? Is it effective? Does it help? And can you blame people for who they are? For slipping into patterns of self-destructive behavior? For lashing out, and hurting, beyond measure, the people who attempt to help them?

They are difficult themes, and the book is not an easy one to get through, although, when reading it, I was immersed in the pages and could easily read 70 or 80 pages in a sitting. Returning to the book and the darkness and unhappiness that it held was more difficult.

3.5 out of 4, rounded up

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those great books that is hard to recommend. This is a pretty detailed family saga spanning several generations and although the details accumulate and build to a satisfying ending sequence, they seem to weigh the book down at times. To summarize briefly without giving away too much, some pretty awful stuff happens to a family of do-gooders. If you do read this, avoid looking at any of the plot descriptions. The effect Mantel achieves in leading us to and finally revealing an unspoken event is devastating, but would likely be ruined by too much advance knowledge of the story.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

No words are enough to praise Mantel.

[Girish · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Forgetting is an art like other arts, It needs dedication and practice."

This is one of Mantel's best books that non-chalantly manages to spook you when you least expect it. As it moves between the present and the past, Ms.Mantel tries to lead us to make sense of the present with the past.

At the centre of the book is Ralph Elsted and Anna Elsted - the couple who claim they are occupational Christians - not driven by God's calling but by the practical aspects of helping others. Present day, their 4 children are going through a bit of rebellious phase with their parent's activities and there is an allusion to the African trip. History, we see why Ralph chooses to join the missionary trip despite wanting to be a geologist and his parents coersion to choose the Chritian path. And of-course the African phase when Aparthied motion starting and well kept secret that springs a surprise.

Both Ralph and Anna are memorable protagonists with their attitude. Emma, Ralph's sister becomes the adviser to her nephew and nieces, who also manages to be the bridge between the family. I don't know how she manages to do it, but the writing is very different from any of her other books. There is gravitas in her writing of certain parts while there is cynism or sarcasm in others - and she cleverly disguises so that you don't know one from the other. The African portions were the best written of-course and I loved the way the parts were written.

What becomes of one's nature and a couple's relationship after an life altering episode is explored with sensitivity by Ms.Mantel. And the prose is brilliant as usual.

“Interesting how our vocabulary responds, providing us with words we have never needed before, words stacked away for us, neatly folded into our brain and there for our use: like a bride's lifetime supply of linen, or a ducal trove of monogrammed china. Death will overtake us before a fraction of those words are used.”

The book will make you remember those words in the complex setting it creates.

[Apollinaire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't read thrillers, and this novel by the "Wolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies" master is not a thriller, but the way it dilated and slowed right when you knew something terrible was going to happen was so terrifying that I actually couldn't continue (for a few hours anyway).

This not-thriller converts thrill into terror by discovering the Bad we cannot escape not in action or event but in people, the bad seeds whom no amount of "giving the benefit of the doubt" will help. But that describes most thrillers, with their Jeffrey Dalmers. What is different here is that Mantel tries out this idea of what we "work with" in other people in more mundane and benign but also more unavoidable settings: family, marriages, etc. So they become terrifying by association.

The trauma at the center of the innocently titled "Change of Climate" happened decades before its present (the late 1970s) when Anna and Ralph Eldred are living in northern England (the windswept sea-version of Bronte terrain) with their big, chaotic do-gooder family. The tragedy occurred when The Eldreds were newlyweds running a mission in South Africa, less for religious purposes than for humanitarian ones, and were jailed for "terrorism" (i.e., congregating with Blacks and "coloreds".) Someone had been spying on them and reported their activities to the South African police. So the Eldreds are given the choice to either head back to England or go north to Botswana and run a ghostly missionary there. If they stay put, they'll be terrorized by the local Afrikaaners and the police will do nothing.

The Eldreds are too proud to head home, but in Botswana they meet with much worse calamity. The husband, whose idea this mission was, has the kind of abstract sense of people that allows him to hope for them but also makes him blind to danger, and he ends up walking right into tragedy, trailing his wife et. al. after him. The thing is, his and her mistakes in judgement are not so far from what any of us "bleeding-heart" types (ie., everyone I know) would make.

The book was scary enough that I had to haul out gloomy nostrums to recover. ("Trust your instincts." "Righteousness is just another name for pride." "Your worst fears are probably at least half right," etc. etc.) I'm doing okay now, though, probably out of a healthy defensive system: I found myself wondering if Mantel's domestic analogies for the novel's "heart of darkness" are quite justified.

[Lissa Notreallywolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilary Mantel is my current favorite author. I loved Fludd for it's subtle searching out of the failure of Vatican II to grant corporate or personal renovation to the institution. This is another book with religious critique on the side of Protestant (?) missionaries returned from South Africa. The book is excellent in describing the mixed motives that sent Ralph and Anna to a land where the complexities outstripped their ability to comprehend, and required more prudence than their effort to help would permit. But all this and the nightmare that followed are in the past, divulged in tiny pieces throughout this family dynamics that follow in England.
This is a wonderful psychological description of how denial on the parental level often produces distortions in their children who sense the unarticulated truths of their parents. One example less evident than perhaps the main plot line indicates is the fact that the Victorian father of Ralph and Anna, who forbid his son to study paleontology because it supported Darwin is the father of two children who could not keep from adulterous relationships. I found all of the characters sympathetic, and very much understood the draw of the small holding by the sea as an anchor for the two men who found themselves adrift. I liked the doctor who was humane enough to give a physical excuse to her sister in law, who truly did suffer heart trouble of an invisible nature. It's a great novel, especially in its descriptions of grief.

[Ken Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the finest novels I have ever read. It follows the lives of Anna and Ralph Eldred, newly married and off to South Africa as lay missionaries. Apartheid is at its height, and the couple runs afoul of the authorities. They are deported to neighbouring Beuchuanaland, where an event of almost unimaginable horrow sees them return to England where Ralph takes over the running of a chartitable trust founded by his father. Their lives, though dedicated to good deeds, are tainted by the memory of their time in Africa and a determination to repress the impact of their experiences.
The book contains the great themes of faith, loss, forgiveness and the illusive nature of redemption. The characters leap off the page, and even the minor characters - Ralphs sister Emma, the Eldred children, and a troubled young woman who comes to stay in the Eldred home - are given significant parts to play. I loved the dialoge, especially between the Eldred children, for its humour and wit.
I read this book three times (the last time for a book club meeting) and found new layers of meaning and enjoyment each time. Very highly recommended.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb writing as ever, though this one is a modern domestic tale rather than anything spiritual or historical. Mantel not only writes beautifully, and gets inside her characters, making them sympathetic, she actually makes you feel the emotions they are feeling.

The brutality in the book is at times painfully real, triggering for those affected by the current conflicts.



Spoiler alert…
I was a little frustrated that the affair merged in with the earlier tragedy, muddying the waters of the separation decision making. I would have left R for that alone. He was more culpable for that than the tragedy, which was in fact triggered by A to start with. Any blame attached to R for that would have been deeply unfair as there were a number of causes and he too was a victim.

[Ahtims · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a Fantastic read.
Came across this book by Hilary Mantel when it was suggested by Girish, one of my GR and whatsapp book group friends for a monthly challenge.
I was engrossed in the storyline which showcased the human foibles and how chance, decisions and unintended slight caused by words can topple human lives altogether.
The characters were portrayed as real life , with flaws as well as redeeming qualities. No one was too good or too bad to be unbelievable.

I listened to the audio version and was almost sad when it ended. I didn't want to come out of this world created by Mantel.

[David Streever · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book: a family in England dedicated to doing good is touched by evil while working in Africa as missionaries 20 years ago, and the ways that the experience hang over and influence their family through grief, healing, and love.

The characterizations of the children, their parents, and the ways they interact with each other were perfect and remarkably authentic. The subtleties are too beautiful to be missed, including one line in the last pages which brings us back around to a much earlier comment made by one of the characters and dispels any ambiguity about the novels ending.

A really incredible book, Mantel uses beautiful prose sparingly, giving us poetic depictions of places and people in short and concise sentences.

[Tiah]

I see another reader (John) on goodreads wrote something akin to 'Another great book that is difficult to recommend.' How true. Because this is a brilliant book, that will stick with me for years. It is powerful, on so many levels. Discussions around tables could go on for hours on the themes and ideas being toyed and teased. Yet, with quiet family drama, Mantel pokes at so much emotion, slithering in and striking where it hurts the most - it isn't exactly the type of book you wrap up and stick under the Christmas tree for your unsuspecting fellow bookworm.

I am very GLAD I did not know how emotionally challenging the book would be or I probably would have avoided it, given my current mental state. Nor can I say it did anything positive to said mental state. However, the issues - religion, goodness, right / wrong, family mechanics, justice (or lack of), poverty, privilege - she nails many issues that are constantly on my mind when tackling my own work. I didn't feel so much jealousy or envy, more: this is how its done. Wondering if it deserved a small applause.

A few places had me wondering if she would have used the same words / phrases now. Language of South African poverty and privilege has evolved and there still smacks of bit of colonialism attitude in some of the scenes. Yet, that may have been done on purpose to reflect the characters inner struggles with their own situation and prejudices and have nothing to do with Mantel's own views.

[Sam Aird · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quietly devastating book on loss, faith and family. I have read cheerier novels. But I didn't like them as much. (Probably a 4.5/5 really)

[Flo · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite Mantel books so far! This was such a page-turner. I loved the cast of characters, all so varied and flawed and human, but the narrative structure was what made this so good. The way the story moves between the past and present to gradually reveal what happened to Ralph and Anna in South Africa / Bechuanaland was masterful, totally chilling but not overdone. I think perhaps the final stroke of the ending was a little saccharine but this is a small point — still really enjoyed this.

[Anne Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never read anything by this author before and other than knowing she had won the Booker for Wolf Hall I knew nothing about her.

The book is about two people, Ralph and Anna Eldred, their marriage, their lifelong work with charities, and the decisions they made at key stages of their lives and how these impacted on them and others. It is essentially about the complexities and trials of being human and how decisions made on our journey though life impact on our lives and the lives of those closest to us.
Mantel takes a very balanced approach in looking at the issues raised and for her there are no black and whites -whether its working for charities, marriage, child rearing, affairs of the heart, experience of apartheid in Africa. She looks at each topic from one or several angles and in that sense she captures the complexities of living and the dilemmas posed for many of us.
Good and Evil are juxtaposed all the time and Mantel is not afraid of being politically incorrect. She covers some interesting ground - how much damage is done in the name of doing good - what happens when well meaning people go where they are not wanted - the resentful behaviour and savagery of the oppressed in South Africa during the apartheid regime - the long term damage of repressed emotions.
Initially I found the book difficult to get into as its structure initially was a bit fractured. However a third way into it I got hooked and found it totally absorbing. and thought provoking. I liked the fact that it wasn’t preachy and that it provided no easy answers. The ending to my mind is inconclusive - a bit like life. Overall I would highly recommend it.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this book with a whim of prejudice. I had read Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies and both books left me dazzled. Could A Change of Climate rise to the challenge?
Well it has, and with the highest marks! Let me tell you that I am ready to say this is one of the best novels I have ever read (and I have read quite a lot, now being 76). I will not tell you why because: a) I would disclose spoilers; b) I believe this is a very personal book, and c) I believe that everyone should reach their own conclusions.
But: the prose is superb, the psychology of the characters is accurate and sharp and the whole story is poignant. The subject is doing good. Is doing good worthwhile? Does doing good take you closer to God? Or is it just a matter of arrogance?
It is for the reader to find out and to answer. Read this book and you will have a unique literary and human experience!

[Mirren Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been put off Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both by their length and my perception that they will be hard going. And I'm not really up for that at the end of a busy day at work. However, I don't feel justified in writing off the writer so lauded by her peers without at least accessing some of her work. So I tried 'A Change of Climate'. It's many years old - 20 at least. No doubt her craft has developed since then - but what a book. It's fresh and challenging, interesting and intriguing, and without cliche in its subject matter and style.

I feel quite prepared to venture into historical territory now - but it may need to wait for a clear head, uninterrupted time and a warm breeze. (Mirren)

[Berry Muhl · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did I miss this entry? I read this book a month ago.

Mantel's penchant for tragedy and horror, set in a historical context, continues apace. This is the only novel of hers I've read that isn't set among a host of significant personages you might find in Wikipedia or Britannica. It's a smaller, more quiet story, with much less violence overall, but as is usually the case, it hinges on a rather horrific incident that even I, jaded reader of horror and historical violence, found hard to read.

You've been warned.

Ultimately, it's just a study of how people, also jaded, and in some ways falling short of their own heroic prestige, cope with tragedy, and how, decades after the fact, completely unrelated events can bring that past to the fore. Recommended, but steel yourself.

[WndyJW · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Hilary Mantel. This story of Ralph and Anna, "professional Christians" is a study of love, charity, evil, good, bad, and of our human efforts at understanding our own intentions. It is not, as the cover says, a first-rate thriller, although there is something that casts a shadow of this family, a tragic event, that the reader doesn't learn of until much later in the book. The pace of the story is steady, the characters so real I can see them.
If asked now I would say my favorite writer is Hilary Mantel.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

As ever a great novel from Mantel. It starts slowly as a family-ish saga about a vaguely churchy family in Norfolk. The parents had been missionaries in Africa...gradually the story gets darker as secrets are revealed. This novel took me by surprise when it became a real page turner about halfway through. So well written, although I can't quite agree with the description of 'dark humour'. Highly recommended.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, painful book. I'm not sure I would pick it up to read again if I knew how painful it would be to read it--but I'm glad I read it. (If that makes sense.) Not for the faint of heart. It hurts. But it's so well-written and so real.