Vacant Possession

Axon Family #2

by Hilary Mantel

Ten years have passed since Muriel Axon was locked away for society's protection, but psychiatric confinement has only increased her malice and ingenuity. At last free, she sets into motion an intricate plan to exact revenge on those who had her put away. Her former social worker, Isabel, and her old neighbors have moved on, but Muriel, with her talent for disguise, will infiltrate their homes and manipulate their lives, until all her enemies are brought together for a gruesome finale. Hilary Mantel's razor-sharp wit animates every page of this darkly comic tale of retribution.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Audiobook, Contemporary, Novels, Ebooks

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

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

[Sheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Muriel Axon is released from a mental institution, and plots revenge upon her social worker and neighbors who she feels have wronged her. A very black comedy of errors, it's a well written book, but not an enjoyable book. The problem is, every character in it is such a miserable sod, I couldn't work up the least bit of sympathy for any of them. It's not a good sign when you hope all the characters in a book commit mass suicide.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Mantel,ergo it's brilliant.What else is there to say?

[Jay Daze · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Jacobean changeling revenge play, a ghost haunted world, an institutionalized world where Brits are dehumanized and alienated all in the effort to 'care' for them in way that is deeply uncaring. Muriel Axon is the monstrously wonderful axle around which this story of the destruction of a family rotates. She toys with the other characters in a dreaming, musing, vengeful way.

A disturbing book, which clings to my mind like some vicious animal, raking my brain with its claws. It doesn't even let the screams tail off, but cuts off mid-way -- so they never end.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the follow up to Every Day is Mother's Day. It is more coherent than the first volume: the basic plot is that ten years have passed since the first story and Muriel, who in book 1 was a rarely-speaking strange character supposedly of limited intelligence, has 'educated' herself in how to pass as a human being and sets out on a quest of revenge once she is released from a mental hospital under the 1980s Care in the Community Thatcherite initiative.

Again, this is billed as dark humour though a lot of it is not actually funny. Characters are constantly at cross purposes with each other, the nadir of this being the phone call between Colin's daughter Suzanna and his ex-lover Isabel. Isabel is now married and an alcoholic, and the connections between all the characters become more convoluted though not exactly believable. A lot of loose ends are tied up from the first book, such as who was the father of Muriel's baby. Part of Muriel's revenge is getting back her (murdered) baby, which would involve a second murder. Meanwhile she tricks and manipulates those she hates, in the guise of two different personas she bases upon people she knows, and commits murder along the way managing to pin it on another character.

It was hard yet again to feel sympathy for the characters though I had a little for Colin's luckless sister Florence. The ending is a damp squib, totally inconclusive - and what was Muriel waiting for back at her old home? The logic of the situation surely called for her to revisit the canal. Anyway, I didn't like it any better than its predecessor so again it is a 2 star rating from me.

[Ana]

Hilary Mantel always dazzles me, to the point that I firmly believe her to be the greatest English language writer alive. Just before this novel I had read Every Day is Mother's Day ad it was unbelievably good. Then I started Vacant Possession, unaware that the story continued here. Oh, heavens, I could not leave the book on the table until I finished it!
I'm just dying to read The Mirror and the Light, i.e. the last book of the trilogy that started with Wolf Hall.
Every person who aspires to write should learn how to do it by reading Mantel's novels.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes things are dark but funny. Sometimes they’re so dark they start to seem pointless. This one felt a bit pointless to me; it was a foregone conclusion after the first hundred pages that any possible outcome would inevitably turn out as badly as possible, every character would make the bleakest, worst decision, and that things overall would line up so neatly in favor of Muriel’s ugly plans that she might as well have been the hand of Job’s god. Nevertheless, I persevered. Mantel might not be for me.

[Anisha Inkspill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the sequel to Every Day is Mother’s Day(Axon family), where Muriel (in several personas) is back and plotting revenge.

Like the prequel, this is also a dark tale, and though it doesn’t go down the road of infanticide there are a few unsettling scenes, and the ending is disturbing by how it’s rooted in the every day.

This novel is also pitched as a comedy which mostly bypassed me. The plot is made interesting with all the entanglements, but I wasn’t completely absorbed in this one.

I’m not sure why as there were many dramatic or intriguing moments and plot twists, and I liked how the main theme of exploring family relationships was further textured by the nature Vs nurture question.

I also didn’t mind how the style of this and Every Day is Mother’s Day(Axon family) are very different from Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, I thought the earthy tones gelled better with both novels content, but I just wasn’t able to connect enough to the ongoing escalating chaos.

When the ending came I knew it would be shocking – as the protagonist, Muriel Axon, was an anti-hero type – but the novel was so busy flitting between scenes and characters (which it did seamlessly and without effort) that there wasn’t enough room for me to build enough empathy to connect with Muriel (or any of the other characters). This aside, it’s beautiful how the story unravels – almost like watching a ballet that doesn’t miss a beat.

[MaggyGray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm, ein etwas seltsames Buch - erst am Schluss habe ich erfahren, dass es da wohl einen Vorgängerband gibt.
Die Sprache von Mantel ist eigentümlich lebhaft und hat viele Bilder in meinem Kopf entstehen lassen, aber alles in allem war mir die Geschichte einfach ein bisschen zu oberflächlich und nichtssagend.

[Jean Carlton · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't require likable characters but I do find it helpful to CARE, even a little bit, about at least one of them. This motley crew offered none. Very strange oogy story....strange indeed. As for blurbs using 'wit' and 'laugh yourself silly'? No, not this reader.
One star.. yet I got through it on the fact that I've very much liked some of Mantel's other work--and on the strength of the writing.

"She caught sight of her white face in the dark kitchen window; peaked, blurred, with formless swimming eyes."

"The black branches of the trees on the avenue bent under the weight of the winter, and then came a thaw, the gutters running with icy flood water."

[Florence (Lefty) MacIntosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sequel to Every Day Is Mother's Day is even bleaker than the 1st book! What is it that compels me to read about characters I feel no connection or sympathy for? To call it humour is a stretch; it’s just a strange & fascinating story that’s really well told. You’ll enjoy it more if you read "Every Day is Mother's Day" 1st

[Lynn Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite and horrifying... As always, Hilary Mantel's lucid prose draws you into the world she creates. In this case the standard suburban landscape becomes so creepy and terrifying that I could hardly bear to read the final few pages. It's like a David Lynch movie ("Blue Velvet") written by Jane Austen.

Technically the book is a sequel (to "Every Day is Mother's Day"), but I haven't read the first book and this one felt self-contained to me.

[kp · Rating 4 out of 5]

When most people hear the name Hilary Mantel, they'll think of the novels about Thomas Cromwell, the most recent volume being The Mirror and the Light. I've enjoyed those fat, detailed, atmospheric historical novels, but I think it's Mantel's other work that sets her apart. In many of her novels, the most masterful of which is surely Beyond Black, Mantel conjures the chaos lurking at the edges of so-called ordinary experience and somehow manages to skew late-twentieth-century society while delving into the whorls of the human brain when faced with trouble and woe. In this novel, a shapeshifting woman with a cracked soul becomes the lever that pries open London's suburban dreams. Weird and dark.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not only did I not like this book, I felt the need to get it out of my house as quickly as possible. It's very well written from the standpoint of plot pacing and sheer artistry with language, but it is so creepy and devoid of sympathy that I was afraid of contamination. There was not a single character that was worthy of redemption. Although I detested every page, I kept reading for the same reason that one gawks at horrible auto accidents.

[Sonja Smrekar · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was all going well...

Up until the final two pages I was really enjoying the story and then the actual ending was just... meh. Anticlimax. Shame, because I really love everything else by this author.

[Chris Sanders · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thoroughly unenjoyable.

[Girish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Far superior than it's predecessor in it's intelligence and writing, the Axon family's revenge tale is one of karmic coincidences and broken families. Muriel Axon - the demented child-lady in the first book has now, after 10 years, learnt to imitate humans and take on multiple forms to seek revenge for what happened to her mother and child. It doesn't help that she has cheated her way out of a mental health institute and she firmly believes she is a changeling.

The book helpfully fills you in on the critical aspects of the first book - so much so that you do not have to worry about remembering it is a sequel. And then it does something funny - it connects every aspect of the first book and brings life a full circle (nearly). Colin Sydney is now resigned to an unhappy marriage and his first daughter finds herself pregnant with a married man's child. Muriel is in the household in disguise as a help and we see her moonlighting as a nurse at the mental health facility where Colin's mother and Isabel's father are admitted. Colin and his family are insufferable.

Everytime Muriel wants to take revenge - they totally outdo her by screwing up their own lives by being themselves. And therein lies the fun part - the complext mistakes and decisions that are much worse than anything a changeling can bring upong the living. The dark comedy comes to a chilling end with many secrets revealed that completes the circle.

I later found Vacant possession is a legal term for the owner to come and possess the house after the legal tenant has left it empty for a while. What a witty title. Dame Mantel's writing is a lot more purposeful and we actually get what she is upto unlike in the prequel. The last few chapters however were a muddle of instances and horrors that take away the lightness of the earlier chapters.

Not the best, but definitely the better one among the two.

[Emma Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this straight after 'Every Day is Mother's Day' and Hilary Mantel has hit the nail on the head. A duology about a young adult with mental health issues, love, affairs and the supernatural thrown in too. The characters have made me laugh, cry, despair and reflect and when an author can do that you know it's good. Not so keen on her historical fiction but this was great.

[Gerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great sequel to her first novel 'Every Day is Mother's Day' which I read earlier in the month. It picks up the lives of those in the aforementioned book ten years after the events in the said book.

It is dark but very funny. The deranged daughter is now out of the mental institution and has become more cunning and sets out to seek revenge on those that she feels has wronged her. Furthermore, the tangled web of relationships between the small number of characters in the book makes for a drama of almost slapstick proportions but there is a sinister edge to it despite the humour.

A great read. I shall venture into Hilary Mantel's historical novels at some point in the future.

[Joan Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

" Before she had time to scramble to her feet the intruder was upon them; not the Reverend Teller, but a wild youth, brawny and stubble-headed, wearing boots the equal of the vicar’s, and with leather thongs binding each wrist.

‘Jesus,’ Alastair breathed. He sized up the lad and knew he was no match. They were at his mercy. Do something, Scab, he thought, distract him, offer him your body.

‘We weren’t doing no harm, mister,’ he said in a whining voice. ‘Don’t beat us up, we’ll leave peaceable, honest.’

The youth’s beefy chest heaved. He reached forward; Alistair was taken up by the front of his zipper jacket and held, skull to hairless skull.

‘Where’s that friggin’ Austin?’ the youth demanded.
‘Never saw him,’ Alastair said gamely. ‘Who are you? Aw, gerrof, don’t torture me.’

‘Me?’ said the youth. He breathed into Alistair’s putty face. ‘I’m his friggin’ probation officer.’ " 214

Who else but the wonderful Hilary Mantel in her pre-Wolf Hall days, the days when she let rip with her changeling self. In comparison with her early work, "Wolf Hall" (much as I like it) is a surprisingly conventional work. Re-reading Vacant Possession, which was first published in 1987, I was reminded again what an outlaw, what a renegade, she is by nature, a demonic writer who says to us, ‘I’m not making this up. It’s like that, you know it is.’ And we do know it, though most of the time we don’t choose to think about it: human beings are just as deep, dark and strange as they are in these early books (Every Day is Mother’s Day, Vacant Possession, Fludd, Beyond Black.) Forget the lurid prose of horror stories and the manufactured creepiness of vampire tales; this is the real thing, scary, challenging and deeply disturbing to our sense of the reliable ordinariness of life – and at the same time funny, very funny (fiendish glee, says the blurb), and with a beautifully merciless turn of phrase:

"Ryan was still flushed, his thin straw hair stuck up in tufts where he had raked his fingers through it when he talked about Isabel. He was a mass of little tics, of amoral reflexes, of tiny mental knee-jerks that kept him out of guilt and anguish and justified himself to himself" 166

It’s the blackest of black comedies about the welfare state under Thatcher. It’s also, as the title suggests, about a house haunted by the cruelty, deprivation and malice that’s been played out in it so that it can never make a home for the family that comes into it later. If Mantel doesn’t exactly believe in ghosts, she does seem to believe in the power of unhappiness to haunt places and to influence the people who live in them. And she certainly believes in a psychic wasteland where unwanted humans like her character Muriel Axon live, in which they’re drawn into a kind of magic thinking to put some order into that wasteland.

I was trying to think, as I read, who she reminds me of in this book, and the two I came up with were Muriel Spark, though she is a more domesticated beast than Mantel, and the great Australian Patrick White. Even though White has a much grander (and more grandiose) project, he has a similar attraction to, and feeling for, the battered, the outcast, the extreme character who just doesn’t fit the accepted mould, and there’s a similarly surreal take on the stolid pieties of the mainstream. But I can’t imagine Patrick White writing about the friggin’ probation officer.

[Maureen Trent · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book hard going despite the satire. There are a number of characters including the alter egos of Muriel in disguse. The lives are linked by Muriel. It probably needed reading in larger sections than I managed but none of the characters is likeable so I didn't feel really invested despite the clever concept and writing.

[l · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Colin fell back into his chair and stared at the TV. It was an early evening variety show. To the accompaniment of facetious patter, a magician held up a burning spike and passed it slowly through the forearm of his studio volunteer. The audience applauded. The magician withdrew the brand, and held it flickering aloft. The volunteer's face wore a set, worried smile. There was an expectant hush; a roll of drums; and then the magician, with great deliberation, whipped the flame through the air and poked it cleanly through his victim's chest."

There's a part in The Art of Cruelty where Maggie Nelson lists female writers known for their 'cruel writing' - the obvious (O'Connor, Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Sarah Kane etc) as well as some I'm not familiar with (hope to rectify that soon, starting with Compton-Burnett) - and I was surprised at the omission of Mantel. It's probably a cliche at this point to call her prose incisive, but it's the perfect word to describe her writing. She carves out figures and worlds with her sharp, immaculate prose, and then twists the blade, leaving you reeling and marveling slightly.

Tbh, Mantel's mind terrifies me but that's part of the thrill.

[Barbara Sibbald]

A delicious follow-up to Hilary's first novel, "Every Day is Mother's Day," with suitable dollops of dark humour and a sustained twisting plot that finally comes together at the end.

Wikipedia explains the plot (so much as that is possible):
Muriel Axon has been released from a mental institution under the Care in the Community programme and seeks revenge on those whom she blames for putting her there – Isabel Field her social worker, now unhappily married to an assistant bank manager, Isabel's father who it transpires was the father of Muriel's baby, and Colin Sidney who now lives in Muriel's old house and whose daughter is now pregnant by Isabel's husband. Muriel, who has developed a skill at mimicry and is a master of disguise, manages to infiltrate Colin and Isabel's families with tragic results.

***
It is those disguises, alter-egos in essence, that make this novel so delightfully twisted. That and the "coincidences," which unlike many book are truly earned (and work).
A must read one-two punch!

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very, very funny - and also not a little dark. Didn't realise till I read the brief essay by HM at the end of this edition that it was a sequel to "Every Day Is Mothers' Day", which I haven't read yet, but it's a good standalone in itself. The author said in a recent interview that when she was starting out she had no real facility for plot, and in the first few chapters of this early novel that shows - it feels a bit formulaic, like it's trying too hard. But such is the strength of her very real facility for hilarious dialogue and quietly grotesque characterisation, these misgivings quickly evaporate. Interestingly, in its concern for the crossover between mental disturbance and the supernatural, it frequently feels like a precursor to the later, and better, "Beyond Black". But it's a terrific piece of black comedy, with a fair bit of sharp social criticism thrown in. Four stars. Recommended.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the super creepy follow-up to "Every Day is Mother's Day." It's ten years later and a wronged and pathetic character from the previous novel is let loose from the loony bin, set on ruining the lives of the people she thinks put her there.

There were a lot of loose ends in "Every Day is Mother's Day," but "Vacant Possession" ties them up almost too well. One theme of the novel is coincidence, which is intentional, but requires some suspension of disbelief. It feels like an unreal parable; everyone is interconnected in a horrible knot that keeps on tightening.

It's a book about vengeance. Where the first book was bleak, this one is twisted and out to get you. We never get to see the ghosts first hand, but they're there, among the humans, with a changeling or two emerging from the canal bank. Appropriate for October.

[Chrystyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel - very Good
I really shouldn't put off writing down my thoughts on the books I read, it's been almost a month since I read this and I've read another 4 and a half since then. Nevertheless, this one has stuck with me.

Written back in 1986 well before the dizzy heights of Wolf Hall et al, this is a very strange little book. Bleakly, darkly funny and a little disturbing, the story centres around Murial Axon, newly released from an institution and hell bent on destroying those she blames for putting her there.

I'm trying not to put any spoilers in, but the characters we meet have all got more than just Murial in common and the story builds to a final denouement which leaves you wondering about many things.

This settles for me that Hilary Mantel is an author I need to backtrack on. Definitely more than just a writer of historical fiction.

[Becky Marietta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Argh! I read this book immediately after reading its prequel (Every Day Is Mother's Day) so that I could see what happened next. Imagine my rage, then, at an unsatisfying ambiguous "Lady or the Tiger" ending! I want closure!

The story was well-told, Muriel's character was terrifying, and the connect-the-dots circumstances that tied all the characters together were fascinating. People keep talking about how funny this book was; I didn't get funny out of it at all, but it was terribly interesting. However, if an author is going to bother to write a sequel, I think she should also bother to close the door and lock it when she leaves the story for good. Otherwise readers like me are going to stand outside, staring in the dark windows in fury. (less)

[Nick Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The situations are unbelievable, as are the ever-increasing interconnecting coincidences. And the minor characters are completely unbelievable. But this is all fine, exactly as it should be, because this novel is a farce, and a funny one at that.

Ludicrous characters behave in ridiculous ways, speaking past each other in spectacularly funny dialogue that brings the whole enterprise together to a delightfully ambiguous ending.

This book won't be for everyone, despite how well it's written, but that's also fine, as I don't think it was meant to be.

[Natalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh I really enjoyed this one. I love revenge stories, particularly those of unusual characters. It's delightfully wicked, and actually very insightful.

It showcases the failings of most government systems in looking after the more vulnerable members of its public. And how these members cope and survive within this environment. No character is truly good or bad, just flawed. Which makes it a rather remarkable story.

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This takes the reader to some very dark places indeed, and asks uncomfortable questions about what happens to the people turned out into the world from the old asylums. If the system was no longer able to support them there, how could it possibly support them when they were set adrift? And without support, what might a person like Muriel Axon do to herself and others?

A clever and unsettling book.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vacant Possession is the follow up to Mantel's Mothers' Day. Great book, scary and creepy. Everyone has some kind of issue, and their lives become tangled in this web that the main person Muriel is weaving as she plots her revenge. Worth the read if you like scary/creepy.