Learning to Talk: Short Stories

Hilary Mantel

Learning to Talk: Short Stories
Format
Paperback
Publisher
HarperCollins Publishers
Country
United Kingdom
Published
21 August 2003
Pages
176
ISBN
9780007166442

Learning to Talk: Short Stories

Hilary Mantel

A companion piece to the captivating memoir Giving Up the Ghost by the Man Booker-winning author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.
This sharp, funny collection of stories drawn from life begins in the 1950s in an insular northern village ‘scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.’ For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.

In ‘King Billy is a Gentleman’, the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. ‘Curved Is the Line of Beauty’ is a story of friendship, faith and a near-disaster in a scrap-yard. The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In ‘Third Floor Rising’, she watches, dazzled, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity.

With a deceptively light touch, Mantel locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.

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