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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
Audiobook4 hours

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Written by Hilary Mantel

Narrated by Jane Carr

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

A brilliant collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

Hilary Mantel is one of Britain’s most accomplished and acclaimed writers. In these ten bracingly subversive tales, all her gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged, summoning forth the horrors so often concealed behind everyday façades. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in ‘Comma’; nurses clash in ‘Harley Street’ over something more than professional differences; and in the title story, staying in for the plumber turns into an ambiguous and potentially deadly waiting game.

Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road in Greece, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel’s unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 25, 2014
ISBN9780008101084
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
Author

Hilary Mantel

HILARY MANTEL was the author of the bestselling novel Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which both won the Booker Prize. The final novel of the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and won world-wide critical acclaim. Mantel wrote seventeen celebrated books, including the memoir Giving Up the Ghost, and she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Walter Scott Prize, the Costa Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize, and many other accolades. In 2014, Mantel was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died at age seventy in 2022.

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Rating: 3.857142857142857 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Superb writing in compelling bites.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received my copy of this short story collection for Early Reviewers. My copy did not include the title story. I'm impressed with Mantel's facility with this form. She captures moments of human experience with unblinking clarity; her voice is compassionate but not the least bit sentimental. "Sorry to Disturb" does just that. it's about the uncomfortable encounter of living in a culture that is so alien that one is "tilted from the vertical and condemned [forever] to see life skewed" page 35. "Comma" is a perfect short story. Narrator Kitty and her childhood companion, Mary Joplin, are substantive and vivid. This story about childhood curiosity and expanding worldliness, but with exact naïveté, is oddly moving and vaguely ironic. Very satisfying. "The Long QT" is a wonderful very short piece. Irony at its humorous best. The super-short "Winter Break" toys with the reader, lulling one into a side street of narrative. "Call no man happy until he has gone down into his grave in peace. Or at least to his junior suite; and can rub out today and wake tomorrow hungry." Cynical, yes? "Harley Street" is a funny commentary on the human condition, on the need for belonging. Loved it. "Offenses Against the Person" is a bit more layered, more opaque. Quite good, after some thought. The narrator of "How Shall I Know You?" is palpably real. A less than fully sympathetic author of fiction, now foraying into biography, she tells us of one dreary evening spent providing a reading and signing for a Book Group. In 32 pages, Mantel interestingly explores the dynamics of surface appearances and idealization. Mantel is a master of simple moments and truths that give her characters depth and texture: "In those days I didn't know there was something wrong with my heart. I only found it out this year." With this passage, the narrator's full life becomes figure, providing ground for the 24 hours of the story. Mantel also calls out her own "syntactical oddity," which is of course her signature talent. Her description of a developing migraine is poetry. How weird is that? A heartbreaking portrait of anorexia and the ambivalence of sibling (family?) relations, "The Heart Fails Without Warning" is perhaps a bit overdone. "It's not generally agreed, it's not much appreciated, that people are divided by all sorts of things, and that, frankly, death is the least of them." "Terminus" is an ironic ontological contemplation. This is an interesting and affecting collection of short stories. Definitely recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When this book was published, I initially resented anything that was keeping Hilary Mantel from publishing her third novel about Thomas Cromwell. But I finally gave in and read this collection of eleven short stories, and found that this form, too, is something Mantel does very well. Dark, startling and unsettling, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher includes several gems.In the opening story, Sorry to Disturb, a British woman living in Saudi Arabia is visited by a Pakistani man. His repeated visits become a problem, and she and can't get rid of him. Mantel spent several years in Saudi Arabia herself, and clearly drew on the experience for the themes in this story.In The Long QT, a woman hosting a party discovers her husband embracing another woman. Told from the husband's point of view, Mantel quickly portrays the hostess as just a little bit OCD, and not fully present with her guests:Picking up glasses, she would push through groups of her own guests, guests who were laughing and passing mobile phones to each other, guests who were, for Christ’s sake, trying to relax and enjoy the evening. People would oblige her by knocking back what was in their glass and handing it over. If not she would say, “Excuse me, have you finished with that?” Sometimes they made little stacks of tumblers for her, helpfully, and said, “Here you go, Jodie.” They smiled at her indulgently, knowing they were helping her out with her hobby. In How Shall I Know You?, the reader is part of an author's inner monologue when she appears at book events. I loved this bit about making commitments: When the day came, I wondered why I’d agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you think the time will never arrive: that there will be a nuclear holocaust, or something else diverting. Winter Break is the most vivid and disturbing story in the collection. A couple on holiday travels by taxi to their resort. An incident occurs en route, and the couple remains in the car while the driver handles the situation. A surprising dark ending revealed what really happened, and sent shivers down my spine.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wow. These stories come from an amazing, imaginative mind. Some are shocking, many with unexpected endings. Fortunately, the title story appeared in full in this week's New York Times Book Review. A few of these troubling stories will stay with me for a long time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Hilary Mantel could even make the reading of Old Testament genealogies an un-put-downable pleasure. The short story is not my favourite read, but every one of these is a gem.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I dislike reviewers who, when reviewing an advance copy of a book, take the opportunity to point out errors and issues that obviously relate to the fact that it is, indeed, an advance copy. Every advance copy comes with the warning that it is not the final proof. The intent is to get it in the hands of reviewers so word of mouth can start for the book in time for its release. Now, if the official version of the book has issues – issues to the point that they drive to distraction – then such is appropriate fodder for a review. But don't hammer an advance copy for being an advance copy.I bring this up because I am about to violate my own rule. But I have good cause (doesn't everyone claim to have good cause?) You see, I was immediately taken aback when the short story collection titled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher did not include that short story. The note on the front of the book states "Title story embargoed until on-sale date", which raised many unanswered questions. In fact, those six words are almost a story in themselves. Unfortunately, that six-word story is better than any of the ones in this collection. And that is the reason I bring up the missing story. I cannot believe that it would be so good, so awe-inspiring, so revelatory, such a classic, that it could save this collection.The stories that have been included are flat, inconsequential, and do nothing to move the reader. They are populated by people who are unlikable – but not unlikable enough to be remembered. Things happen to them. And they react, or they don't. And they are people whose problems seem far less than important.The stories go nowhere. They are pointless happenings that don't even contain the pretense of having a point. They are slices of life that have no life.And throughout I kept wondering why I was even bothering.For me, one test regarding the quality of a short story collection is whether, after a short passage of time, I can remember the stories. The good news is that I remembered most of the ones in this collection. The bad news is that I remembered them with distaste.How good is the short story "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher"? I will probably never know because there is nothing in this collection that will make me seek it out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Where I got the book: my local library.Ah, the slender volume of literary short stories! Such things have become a rarity in traditional publishing, but when the author is a double Man Booker winner there’s justification for padding them out with plenty of white space and title pages, choosing the most provocative title for the volume and putting a heavy advertising budget behind it. From the back matter I can see they were first published in journals and/or “best of” short story collections. I haven’t read one of those for decades—I find that my tolerance for the consciously literary has waned, and that now I prefer a more commercial style of fiction written to literary standards.Thus we have a brief collection of Hilary Mantel short stories, written, I suspect, at various times of her life. They are mostly written in the first person. There are themes—chronic illness, childlessness, sterile marriages, death—that might or might not have an autobiographical origin. They range from the poignant (Comma) to the faintly humorous (The Long QT) to the darkly tragic (The Heart Fails Without Warning) to the puzzling (Terminus).I liked How Shall I Know You best, I think, because of the unexpected bite of its ending, and the fact that it’s based on a slice of life of an obscure writer, forced to give talks at even more obscure literary societies. It’s a reminder that Hilary Mantel did her time before encountering success. I bet they put her up in decent hotels now.I thought the title story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, was the weakest, which is a shame since it closes the book. All of the stories are English in the extreme—what do American readers make of them, I wonder?Anyhow, I enjoyed the stories as a whole, and felt refreshed and oddly youthened by a read of the kind I’ve barely experienced since my late 20s. Compared to the way I felt about the two Cromwell books and, especially, A Place of Greater Safety, this volume was a sandwich compared to a banquet, but Mantel is an author whose work I definitely want to pursue.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was my first time reading Ms. Mantel and I would not be hesitant to pick up other works by her. The stories have a quiet way of painting realistic pictures of life that is both unnerving and poignant. I found the strongest stories to be "The Heart Fails Without Warning" and "Offenses Against the Person". Both straightforward stories, one about a family facing a daughter with an eating disorder and the other about a daughter coping with her father's infidelity, are both humorous and sad, what life truly is. The collection is made up of simple stories that stay with you once you finish the last page.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am indeed a Hilary Mantel fan (am awaiting third in her "Wolf Hall" trilogy), so was happy to receive this collection of her short stories via LT's Early Reviewer program. I was NOT disappointed! The character development was both quick and complete, the stories read very visually, and each of the tales was gripping and pulled reader in. Some of them were disturbing, but the characters, and what they were experiencing felt realistic. I am waiting to receive the published book so I can read the title story, which was not released in advance (the title story as well as last story in the early edition reviewed were only ones not previously released/published). Give these short stories a try!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Short stories as one expects them to be: unusual anecdotes of weird topics, simple to read but of heavy substance. most are in first person but you never get to know the narrators. Many involve death. I liked The Long QT perhaps because there is a character with my name and because it ends unexpectedly. The latter is true of Winter Break, too.
    Where do some of these story ideas originate?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Vivid descriptions, wonderful writing and amazing characterizations, make this one of my favorite book of short stories for this year. All are good but there is one that sticks in my mind, the ending kind of socked me in the face, had to go back and re-read to see if I read it right the first time.Then went and re-read the whole story to see if any clues were given along the way. The first time the ending kind of snuck up on me, I just love authors that can do that. Anyway, not going to tell you the name of the story because that would give an unfair advantage, if you know it is coming it is not as surprising.Anyway a group of stories definitely worth reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    “I am willing, though, to tear up the timetable and take some new routes; and I know I shall find, at some unlikely terminus, a hand that is meant to rest in mine.”The bad news is, I had not read Mantel, before reading this collection. The good news is, it is a terrific set of ten stories, making this an ideal introduction. The first story and the last one, (the title story) are perfect bookends, featuring unwanted guests, but the results are shockingly and wickedly different. Mantel has a nice range here, with one story about an expat wife, stuck in Saudi Arabia. There is one dealing with a road-weary author on a book tour and another about a young anorexic girl, slowly wasting away. The title story, my personal favorite, about a plumber who shows up at an apartment, on a sinister mission, involving the infamous British PM.I was surprised at how dark and edgy these stories were. She is also a smart and intuitive writer. Now, I better get busy reading her earlier work.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This collection was rather disappointing. The book had the feel of something thrown together by the publisher to cash in on the popularity of the Cromwell series while book 3 is in progress. The book is pumped up like a teenager's tissue-stuffed bra. The margins are so wide that each page is perhaps 2/3 of the length of a normal page, The font is large enough to see from space, and several blank or nearly blank pages precede each story. Without this trickery this volume would be at most 100 pages. Add to that the fact that all but one story (the title story, which was excellent) had been published before, There were 3 stories I thought excellent, but the rest were just fair to good and there was no cohesion, no stylistic or content flow. There were many times Mantel's erudition and wit were displayed to great advantage but none of this was among her greatest issue. I feel like I have been had for around $25.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received this from early reviewers. Hilary Mantel's skill with language and in painting a picture is superb. I thoroughly enjoyed every word. Reading her modern short stories has strengthened my resolve to read the Cromwell series.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher is a collection of fairly bland and forgettable short stories. The danger with short story collections is that sometimes an author will become too enamored with the freedom of the medium that they enjoy the experimentation with character study and themes, but forget to include a story. That was too often the case here.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Review #4 — The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher and Other Stories by Hillary MantelMantel, twice winner of the Booker Prize, presents here a collection of ten short stories, written between 1993 and 2014, all previously published elsewhere.With such acclaim, I must admit that I bought this book because of its title. I'm sure her Booker-novels are seated proudly on the shelves in every home. Mine are sadly on the TBR-list.Though Mantel's prose is brilliant and her attention to detail vivid, I'm afraid that this collection will not be everyone's cup of tea.I was left with a dark, disturbing and uncomfortable feeling. A feeling I couldn’t shake off only because I didn't want to deal with the tarnished image of reality. I seldom read fiction and those I do, I re-read; this I will not. This is a one-time experience that every reader or aspiring writer should experience only for her literary mastery.First collectively published in 2014 by Fourth State. - IRONJAW'S BOOK REVIEW, Review #4. December 30th 2014.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It annoys me when I don’t like something but don’t know why. In the case of this short story collection by Hillary Mantel, I can’t come up with much of anything to complain about, but I also don’t have much to praise. I suppose that’s what people mean when they say a book was a meh read.But meh doesn’t seem quite right. I liked some of the stories quite a bit. In fact, I liked some of them enough that I wanted more. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe the short story from wasn’t enough for these stories, so they felt incomplete, like there was more story to tell.That wasn’t the case with the opening story, “Sorry to Disturb,” which involves an English woman in Saudi Arabia entertaining an unwanted guest again and again. It plays with expectations of gender and culture and how those expectations make it difficult to say what we really want to say.The antepenultimate story “The Heart Fails Without Warning” is another nearly complete gem. In it, a girl watches her older sister starving herself to death as her family tries to decide what to do. In the story, anorexia is about disappearing, wasting away, and becoming less than human, dying. There’s enough in the story to dig into, and the reveal near the end left me pondering what the full story was.The title story has gotten a lot of attention for its sensationalistic premise, and I enjoyed it well enough, but I didn’t find much meat there. There’s no massive drama, just the internal murmurings of the narrator trying to figure herself out as she deals with the situation. Maybe that’s the point; that the big choices don’t always involve a big noise. Many of the stories featured people learning something or seeing something they shouldn’t (or don’t want to). Mantel’s writing at the word and sentence level is excellent, as I’d expect, but I’m given no particular reason to care about these people or their situations. A couple of the stories end in twists that sent pleasant chills down my spine, but until those twists, I found them kind of dull.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This collection of short stories introduces a new Hilary Mantel to those who know her only from her wildly successful trilogy-in-progress about Thomas Cromwell. The historical novels build up the picture of Henry VIII’s England detail by languorous detail over thousands of pages; these stories set their scenes with a few glimpses, seen suddenly as in a camera flash. The author’s mastery of the language serves her (and us) well in this slighter format. Occasionally, she slips in a wry humorous phrase that surprises… I liked her description of a night in a seedy roadside business hotel: “The night, predictably, was shot through with car alarms, snatches of radio playing from other rooms, and the distant roaring of chained animals…” A couple of the stories, perhaps not the most successful, have O. Henry-like ending twists. All are eminently readable and enjoyable.The publisher, Henry Holt, has chosen not to include the title story in this reviewer's edition.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a wide ranging set of short stories by the twice Booker Award winning Hillary Mantel. This is quite tough going. The character descriptions are sharp and modern. Ideals and morals are things from the past.The variety of voices and settings is dazzling. Her choice of words is precise."I closed the hall door discretely, and melted into the oppressive hush. The air conditioner rattled away, like an old relative with a loose cough." For some reason this reminded me of James Agee's Death in the Family.The stories make for some unsettling reading. I would guess that Alfred Hitchcock would enjoy and understand.Now, I need to take a breath and take on her Cromwell novels yet this year. I expect that it may be difficult to track so many historical characters. It is difficult to imagine the writer of these stories being the same person of the acclaimed historical novels. I just don't feel at the ready for these.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received an advance copy of this book from Librarything in exchange for an honest review. This book is unlike the other two books I have read by this author, "Wolf Hall" and "Bringing up the Bodies". This book is a collection of short stories, all beautifully written. Ms. Mantel has a complete command of the English language and her talent shines through on every page. Today I finished reading "How Shall I know you?". As with all the other stories, this one had my attention from the start. It was the story of a writer in the 1990's, traveling in England speaking to book groups. If I told you the story, it would seem bland and uneventful, but in the hands of this master storyteller, I could not put it down. It was part dream, part nightmare, and ended with a feeling that opportunities come along more frequently than we realize, to make a difference in a less fortunate person's life, but we often let that opportunity pass us by. Hopefully the book tour the protagonist embarked upon was an aberration from the norm.I highly recommend this book to anyone who can discern brilliantly written short stories that make you stop and think.If I had the writing talent of Ms. Mantel, I would continue on, but to sum it up, if you get the chance to read this book, do so ASAP.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There is a good variety of stories presented in this short book. They are so original and so creative; they are a joy to contemplate. Finally, an author has provided something to read that is not the same-old, same-old variation of a tired idea, not something that feels like it has been hastily written to meet a deadline or written simply for television or a future movie. Each story is unique and different in its development of some common themes.One story tackles a clash of cultures in a Middle Eastern country, another challenges the behavior of children and possibly even how the sins of some are visited upon them as adults, another tale intimates that there are alternate lifestyles, others insinuate the existence of magic or the supernatural, another exposes infidelity as its theme, still another offers up how disabilities are actually viewed differently in the eyes of each beholder, and the final piece exposes the radical effects of political conflicts in a story about “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher”. Each story explores the psychology behind the behavior of the characters. The idea that “what goes around comes around” kept returning to me as I read. In one instance it involved a $20 tip, in another, the love of a child, and in a third, the allusion to one’s attachment to a pet.Each of the stories is told in its own individual style, and the voice of this author, blends wit, mystery, and the enigmatic, to build up just the right amount of tension and possibility without causing the reader to have to suspend disbelief. The stories offer a concise and insightful study of the motivation behind certain behaviors which alter our lives in positive and negative ways, the emotions that control us affecting our mental and physical health, and the prejudices that color our personal perception of things. The book is excellent and each story invites stimulating discussions as each explores the intricacies of our minds with all of our strengths and defects.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a collection of short stories, most of which had been published elsewhere previously. Some, like Winter Break, reminded me of the work of Rachel Ingalls, whom I adore. Others seemed more like characters sketches than fully formed stories. The title story was embargoed from the advance reading copy I had, so I cannot comment on that one.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am a great fan of short fiction, but have not till now been a great fan of Ms. Mantel's writing so approached the collection with some skepticism. And while a couple of the stories in this pared down advance copy felt misplaced here (especially the maudlin "The Long QT", on the whole i found it a very satisfying read. My favorite was the first in this group, "Sorry to Disturb" -- for me it created a great sense of place, mood, and tension perfect for this form. Recommend.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Hilary Mantel is a masterful story-teller. This collection of short stories is fun, strange, whimsical, and other-wordly. Some of the stories contain marvelous twists which turn the story you thought you were reading on its head. Other stories contain ironies or revelations which create a curious sense of recognition. All of them contain unexpected insights. Mantel’s writing is crisp, and her descriptions fresh and quote worthy. A truly marvelous collection.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm in total agreement with my friend Gayla—very few of the stories feel like anything complete or well worked out. I was trying to figure out what it is that makes an artist's sketchbook so interesting, but a writer's fragments or juvenilia or something like this just not all that appealing. I guess it's just more of a case of visual art being iterative, but text-based arts—writing, drama, film—are really about the finished product, and it's not really all that much fun to look at an entire collection of out-takes. There were a few good pieces—the title story was well done, and the first one in the galley, "Sorry to Disturb." "Comma" wasn't bad, although it kind of suffered from New Yorker-story syndrome, almost all interior and I'm not sure that's enough to carry it. And I do love her writing, so precise. But otherwise, eh... it's a sketchbook.Also, U.S. audiences who aren't familiar with the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, which is much more well-known in the UK, are going to miss the entire point of one of the stories (not going to say which one because that would amount to a spoiler).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nine stories about present-day British people, none of which are endearing because of their characters but are readable because of Mantel's brilliant writing. Perhaps they lose something in translation to an American culture. I only wish Mantel had a more generous opinion of her fellow creatures.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. First, let me say up front that I am not a great reader of short stories. Having earned a couple literature degrees, I certainly explored the genre a bit, but short story collections are not what I immediately pick up when I'm looking for something to read. That being said, I trust Hilary Mantel implicitly and so was willing to try this one. I am so very glad that I got this chance. Mantel is a writer who is a mistress of her craft. She is invariably in complete control of her material and subjects, and these stories only serve to highlight her strengths. These tiny worlds are meticulously crafted yet leave the reader with a feeling of effortlessness on the part of their writer. From the delicate tension maintained throughout "Sorry to Disturb" to the glimpses of the mysterious and rare of "Comma" and "Harley Street," Mantel hints at other worlds intruding, just out of sight of our own. These characters possess fully-realized voices in a very few pages.This collection, minus the title story, which I look forward to reading as soon as I can get my hands on a complete copy of the work, is linked by its fascination with characters and situations that linger on the edges of things--places of transition. Journeys, deaths, the end of love, growing up--these stories are crafted in such a way that the reader feels as if each word is the perfect choice. The works are intricate and delicate, but their emotional and philosophical array is huge. These are more than well worth the time, and if I could be guaranteed that more collections of stories were this well-crafted, I would spend much more of my time in this genre that offers some great possibilities for creativity and innovation. A great read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My only acquaintance with Hilary Mantel until now has been via her two wonderful, Booker-winning books, "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies." While waiting for the final volume in the Cromwell trilogy, why not dip into her un-Tudor oeuvre and see what else she can do? The ten stories in "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher" present a good opportunity. Most were written and published over the last five years, one back in the '90s. The title story is the most recent and was embargoed before publication date and therefore omitted from the ARC. Thankfully, "The New York Times Book Review" printed the story in its entirety so we early readers got the full Mantel.And it turns out she can do quite a lot, especially in the longer stories, several of which leave a lasting impression, often of unease and foreboding. In the opening story, "Sorry to Disturb," which seems clearly autobiographical, an ex-pat woman chafing against the constraints of her life in Saudi Arabia opens her door to a Pakistani man in distress and becomes subject to his increasingly intrusive attentions as we wonder what is real. The story ends with one of Mantel's signature uses of language that startles and delights:“I can never be certain that doors will stay closed and on their hinges, and I do not know, when I turn out the lights at night, whether the house is quiet as I left it or the furniture is frolicking in the dark.”Frolicking furniture? Really? Jarring but perfect. "Comma" is perhaps my favorite in this collection, beautifully evoking a hot summer and two mis-matched children frightened and exhilarated by what they might see spying on a neighbor. "How Shall I Know You?" is a creepily comic tale of an author's dutiful trekking to book clubs in the hinterlands. And in the marvelous title story, a woman contributes commentary on the petty and political failings of the prime minister her uninvited guest is preparing to assassinate. Mantel's stories are dark, funny, surprising, insightful and beautifully crafted. What more would I want?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very good collection, although the weakest was the title story, where the characters and the plot lacked depth.