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    Fludd
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    Fludd
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    Fludd
    Audiobook6 hours

    Fludd

    Written by Hilary Mantel

    Narrated by Gordon Griffin

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this audiobook

    Full of dry wit, compassionate characterisations and cutting insight, Fludd is a brilliant gem of a book, and one of Hilary Mantel's most original works.

    Fetherhoughton is a dreary town in 1950s northern England. Father Angwin has lost his faith. Sister Philomena strains against convent life. The inhabitants of the town go about their lives in a haze. Then a stranger appears, bringing with him the hint of something new. But who is Fludd? An angel come to shake the dwellers from their stupor, or is he the devil himself, a wanderer of the darkest places in the human heart?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateJun 1, 2011
    ISBN9781407483818
    Unavailable
    Fludd
    Author

    Hilary Mantel

    Hilary Mantel is the author of seventeen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, the memoir Giving Up the Ghost and the short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Her latest novel, The Mirror & the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, while Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were both awarded the Booker Prize.

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    Reviews for Fludd

    3.5/5

    215 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is an amazing book by a great author. Wise and funny.
    • 4/5
      This little book raises more questions than it answers when Father Fludd appears at the rectory in a small northern English village late at night in a thunderstorm. He has been expected ever since the Bishop's visit and his recommendations for a host of changes, including a curate to help Father Angwin accept the modernization of the Catholic Church. These changes prompt Father Angwin to wish the Bishop would "stick to his politics and keep out of religion." Despite his reluctance, the two priests get along well with the help of the whiskey bottle that never seems to run out of spirits.The book is short so I'll let the reader sort out the character of Fludd and the transformations he makes on some of the principal characters. There is some doubt as to who and perhaps even what he really is. Mantel has created a sinister Gothic atmosphere in which some strange and wonderful things happen. She throws in some unexpected humor and much food for thought. I suspect this book and Mantel's rendition on religion will stay with me for quite awhile.
    • 4/5
      In the bleak Northern mill village of Fetherhoughton, the population trudge grimly through life, surrounded by poverty and the tight grip of the Catholic Church. Old Ma Purpit - Mother Perpetua, mother superior and headmistress - terrorises the children and the nuns alike. Father Angwin, the parish priest, doesn't believe in God or in change, and since his job requires the former and his bishop the latter he's begun to put his faith in the whisky decanter. Into this village comes Fludd: the new curate, it seems, and sent by the bishop. Except there's something odd about Fludd - and some odd things are happening in the village. The picture of northern grimness seemed a bit caricatured at the start of the book, like the apogee of one of those deprivation one-upmanship conversations that just gets silly: "When I were a lad, we lived ten of us in one room and me brothers an' me 'ad one pair o' shoes between the six of us." "That's nothing! When I were a lad, we slept seventeen to a bed, and there were that many 'oles in the roof we 'ad to shelter under the whippet to keep the rain off." So also the picture of the Catholic Church: very bleak and wholly negative. But as the book continues these pictures begin to work. Not literally - the village never quite works as a real place - but as symbols of downtrodden lives, of oppressive institutional religion and of looking with new perspectives at the same old things. I didn't love this book, but I did like it, and it did stimulate my thoughts about faith and change. Worth reading, I think, but perhaps the kind of book to borrow from the library rather than to rush out and buy.
    • 4/5
      An in-depth character sketch that has the premise of what would happen when the devil visits a small religious village in England. With the one caveat that the devil is an ordinary man doing ordinary things, creating ordinary human problems. If you are looking for story or plot then this is not the novel for you. If however you enjoy well worked out characters and deeply developed places and times then sink your teeth into this one.
    • 5/5
      Seems to be the comfortable trope of a supernatural visitation (no one can really recall what the new assistant priest looks like), but becomes much more. Without excessive description, but using beautifully crafted language, Mantel creates a small number of characters, each dealing with an issue involving their own oppression. Absorbing.
    • 5/5
      Seems to be the comfortable trope of a supernatural visitation (no one can really recall what the new assistant priest looks like), but becomes much more. Without excessive description, but using beautifully crafted language, Mantel creates a small number of characters, each dealing with an issue involving their own oppression. Absorbing.
    • 5/5
      skillful indictment of hypocrisy in the C of E - executed w Mantel's darkly wry humor
    • 4/5
      A novel about change, After reading Mantel's memoir, the location, characters and milieu of this short novel are doubly interesting, maybe even enchanting. Quite different from either the Wolf Hall novels or "Every Day is Mothers Day" in some respects, quite like those works in other ways.
    • 4/5
      An angel? A somewhat mysterious man shows up at the parish. Who is he? Helps the priest ave the statues, helps a young girl. Fun and effective story.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't quite sure what to make of this book, except that I know I really enjoyed it. The book has a [[Barbara Pym]] flavor - set in 1950s England and focused on clergy, the church, and an unsatisfied woman. But then, of course, it has Mantel's own stamp. A man, Fludd, appears on the parsonage steps and Father Angwin, a priest trying to hide his lack of faith from his congregants, assumes he is the curate that the Bishop recently told him he'd be sending. As we get to know Fludd better, though, things are not as they seem. There's just a hint of the supernatural about him. Things and people seem to be shifting with his presence. His effect on one of the local nuns, Sister Philomena, is extreme, but others change in smaller ways. In a note before the book begins, Mantel says the "the real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar, and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical." Mantel has incorporated these ideas of alchemy into her interesting and satisfying book.
    • 4/5
      Mantel gives us a glimpse into the priesthood and into convent life in Fludd. The setting is Fetherhoughton, a rather miserable mill town. Father Angwin struggles with alcoholism. In fact, he really no longer believes in God. Fludd, who is believed to be the curate sent by the bishop to assist in the parish, arrives and insists upon changes. He even convinced the mother in charge of the convent to allow him to see into the room containing the belongings of the nuns as they entered convent life. We see the struggles and temptations faced by the nuns as well. Fludd is based upon an alchemist who lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s. I am a bit disappointed that none of the major characters are committed to their vows, but the novel is still quite worthwhile. The novel contains quite a few "sound bites" that are quotable.
    • 4/5
      Hilary Mantel is best known in recent years for her award winning novels Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012). Given the accolades showered upon Mantel's fictional treatment of Tudor England, readers may be forgiven for overlooking one of her earlier novels, Fludd (1989.) Indeed, short, strange, tragicomic, and allegorical, Fludd could easily be dismissed as a curio, a relic from before Mantel's ascent to literary stardom. But like the novel's title character, Fludd conceals more than it lets on.Mantel takes us to Fetherhoughton, a dour mill town in the north of England. Mid-twentieth century Fetherhoughton is a singularly miserable place, surrounded by moors on three sides, "the vast cemetery of [the villagers'] imaginations" (12). Father Angwin, Fetherhoughton's spiritual leader, is a drunk. He is also an atheist. Agnes Dempsey, Father Angwin's be-moled housekeeper, cares for the priest and keeps him to a semblance of order.The "modern" bishop, upon visiting Fetherhoughton, insists that Father Angwin dispose of the statues of saints that line the church. Father Angwin is distraught: "[F]aith being dead, if we are not to become automatons, we must hold on to our superstitions as hard as we may" (27). The bishop will also send a curate to "assist"--that is, spy upon--Father Angwin. When the titular Fludd arrives in Fetherhoughton, he is both more and less than what he seems, and he sets into motion events that will change the lives of Father Angwin, Agnes, and Sister Philomena, among other Fetherhoughtonians.Mantel narrates Fludd with a diction that is distinctly English even to these benighted American ears. The "typography of Fetherhoughton may repay consideration," Mantel tells us. "So may the manners, customs and dress of its inhabitants," all of which, by the way, Mantel neatly skewers (11). That line is representative of a syntax and vocabulary that is singularly English. The propriety of Mantel's writing lends it an archness that simultaneously softens and enhances the jibes she makes at her characters' expense. Fetherhoughtonians, stand-ins for Mantel's northern countrymen, refer to the second stories of their homes as "miyoopstairs" (13). Distraught by the suggestion of the vernacular Mass, Father Angwin comments of the townspeople, "I can well understand if you think Latin's too good for them. But the problem I have here is their little grasp of the English language, do you see?" (10). Mantel employs this diction and tone to great comic effect throughout Fludd. She makes it plain that Fetherhoughtonians know nothing about their faith, and the (faux) politeness of her delivery makes clear not only the absurdity of their practice, but also the absolute confidence with which they mangle their religion. Some readers have complained that Fludd loses its momentum in its third act. It's true that the story grows somber as Mantel shifts her perspective from Father Angwin's battles with the bishop to Sister Philomena's more existential struggle with life as a nun. In my opinion, Mantel's decision to focus on Sister Philomena improves the story. It takes what would be a passing comedy and lends it greater depth. As Mantel makes clear before she begins the novel, Fludd is based on a sixteenth and seventeenth century alchemist, so the story must involve transformation. Some readers may find Sister Philomena dull--I did not--but, by becoming involved with her, Fludd himself is changed. Fludd confesses that he normally ignores women, but he is drawn to Philomena. Through Philomena, then, Mantel takes a deus ex machina-type character, the mysterious and unknowable Fludd, and illuminates his humanity. The novel is the better for it. Fludd may not be a perfect or even a great novel, but it is a very good one. Some readers have commented on its subtle "gothic" tone, but that's hardly right; indeed, if the gothic is present at all in Fludd, it is there for Mantel to mock. Fludd is something of a paradox. It is a comedy that knows the importance of the issues at which it pokes fun. Mantel is cynical, but she also believes in personal transformation. It is complicated, like Father Angwin, who, having given up on God, fights all the harder on behalf of "the dear old faith." Fludd is of two minds, like many of us these days: "Everyone is where they should be; or we may collude in pretending so. And God's in his heaven? Very bloody likely, Father Angwin thought" (157). Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Another excellent read Pragmatic description of Catholic Church circa 1950'sMantel is undoubtedly a brilliant writer
    • 3/5
      Perhaps the most disappointing book I've read in a while. The first two thirds are fascinating and excellently done: a range of great if type-cast characters, including the witty, non-believing priest, the 'modernising' (read: self-serving) bishop, the downtrodden spinster housekeeper, the repulsive but somehow attractive proles, the awful senior nun. Add to that the mysterious Fludd - who may or may not be the early modern alchemist, dedicated to effecting transformation in all he touches - and you've got a great mix of Muriel Spark, David Foster, and J. F. Powers.

      Then - plot spoiler!

      It turns out to be a fairly dull tale of a young nun, who was bullied into the nunnery, being 'liberated' by having a few days' worth of sex with the aforementioned alchemist. Really, Ms. Mantel?

      This is very vexing, because the book is otherwise so very excellent. I can almost believe that this has meta-fictional importance (i.e., the book, which looked like it was going to be about a man, ends up being about a woman). That's all very well if you have to write an ENG201: Contemporary Female Authors paper, but it doesn't do much for those of us who actually wanted to read the damn thing. A fabulous theme dealt with intelligently in a beautifully written book that doesn't advertize its 'relevance' is a rare thing, and it's too bad that Mantel either got too lazy or too smart for the book's own good in the last third. How's about a sequel to Fludd that focuses on Angwin, the bishop and Miss Dempsey rather than the unbearably dull Roisin O'Halloran?
    • 3/5

      Mantel won the Booker Prize a few weeks ago for her new novel, which alas sounds totally unappetizing to me. However, I decided it really was about time I read some of her work -- and Fludd was the first book that came to hand.

      In the mid-1950s in a ghastly English Midlands village called Fetherhoughton, whose shambling atavistic inhabitants regard themselves, probably wrongly, as at least superior to the denizens of neighbouring village Netherhoughton, there's trouble afoot in the Catholic church. The local bishop wants to impose "modernization" on crusty old Father Angwin and his flock. To this end he demands the statues of the saints and Virgin be removed from the church and insists he will inflict a new, young curate on the priest. Meanwhile, in the nearby convent comely young Sister Philomena is bridling against the dictatorial regime of Mother Purpiture. And then one day the new curate arrives, called Fludd, like the 17th-century alchemist . . .

      The blurb, picking up on the Fludd connection, is full of hifalutin stuff to the effect that this is "a novel about alchemy and transformation", and maybe the intention was there. For me, though, the book read more like something the lovechild of Diana Wynne Jones and Tom Sharpe might produce, especially if assisted by the ghosts of Stella Gibbons and Mervyn Peake. The writing ranges from the entrancing ("Christ died to free us from the burden of our sin, but he never, so far as [Sister Philomena:] could see, lifted a finger to free us from our stupidity") to the Thog's Masterclass (". . . the very suggestion . . . was enough to make them close their minds and occupy their eyes with their shoelaces" -- ouch!). Although I'm not sure, then, that Fludd is great literature and worth all the plaudits it got from the posh press, I certainly enjoyed its bitchy humour and its mercilessly exaggerated characterization. A fun read.
    • 4/5
      "The arrival of Father Fludd in the parish was marked by a general increase in holiness"The curate Fludd is sent to the village of Fetherhoughton to assist Father Angwin in his priestly duties. Fludd, however, is not at all as expected - to quote from the blurb: "loving beauty and language, sowing scandal and unrest in Fetherhoughton, might he not be the devil?"Almost a month later, I'm still not quite sure what to make of Fludd.Good things:- small village idiosyncracies; bonus points for inter-village disputes and snobbery. Extra bonus points for absurd village name (Fetherhoughton)- crazy, slightly love-lorn spinster housekeeper- complacent, vaguely condescending, alcoholic priest with crisis of faith- lovely, slightly naive, bright, "this can't be all there is" Sister PhilomenaBad things:- absurd night-time statue burial episode- eminently predictable romantic sub-plot with foreseeably disappointing ending. What was wrong with the perfectly good intellectually-satisfying friendship with underlying sexual tension?I also thought Fludd was a weak character. Judging by the quote on the back cover, there is supposed to be something devilish about him, that he might have been sent to lead Fetherhoughton astray. But then in the book he was just a bit mysterious, a few things didn't make sense, mostly he was just there. A new character.In summary, an excellent character study in a quirky setting, but the plot was a little undercooked for my liking.
    • 4/5
      In the bleak Northern mill village of Fetherhoughton, the population trudge grimly through life, surrounded by poverty and the tight grip of the Catholic Church. Old Ma Purpit - Mother Perpetua, mother superior and headmistress - terrorises the children and the nuns alike. Father Angwin, the parish priest, doesn't believe in God or in change, and since his job requires the former and his bishop the latter he's begun to put his faith in the whisky decanter. Into this village comes Fludd: the new curate, it seems, and sent by the bishop. Except there's something odd about Fludd - and some odd things are happening in the village. The picture of northern grimness seemed a bit caricatured at the start of the book, like the apogee of one of those deprivation one-upmanship conversations that just gets silly: "When I were a lad, we lived ten of us in one room and me brothers an' me 'ad one pair o' shoes between the six of us." "That's nothing! When I were a lad, we slept seventeen to a bed, and there were that many 'oles in the roof we 'ad to shelter under the whippet to keep the rain off." So also the picture of the Catholic Church: very bleak and wholly negative. But as the book continues these pictures begin to work. Not literally - the village never quite works as a real place - but as symbols of downtrodden lives, of oppressive institutional religion and of looking with new perspectives at the same old things. I didn't love this book, but I did like it, and it did stimulate my thoughts about faith and change. Worth reading, I think, but perhaps the kind of book to borrow from the library rather than to rush out and buy.