288 pages
English language
Published June 22, 2015 by Fourth Estate.
In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Her classic wicked humor in each story--which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture--brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Mantel brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage, class, family, and sex, cutting to the core of human experience. Unpredictable, diverse, and even shockingly unexpected, each story grabs you by the throat within a couple of sentences. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.
I'd only read Mantel's Cromwell novels, but these are excellent stories. Mantel infuses the mundane life events with a sort of momentousness that happens in real life only when one is particularly aware. And she takes the larger events and moves them into the human, everydayness where all events really belong. This is a very observant book.
I was sincerely creeped out by "The heart fails without warning." That particular story will stick with me for a long time. Sad stories involving sisters usually does that to me. I'm not a huge short story reader or fan, so it says a lot that I enjoyed this one so much.
