Learning to Talk Learning to Talk

Learning to Talk

Short stories

    • 5.0 • 1 Rating
    • $14.99

Publisher Description

A companion piece to the captivating memoir GIVING UP THE GHOST by the Man Booker-winning author, 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.

Reviews

'Mercilessly funny' Daily Telegraph

‘Mantel writes with wit, compassion and great elegance.' Independent on Sunday

On ‘Giving Up the Ghost’:

'Like Lorna Sage's BAD BLOOD, GIVING UP THE GHOST is a story of childhood that is also a piece of history. Hilary Mantel's self-portrait is a masterpiece of wit, but it conjures up a time and a place and an epoch of female experience with razor-edged sobriety. That past, so thoroughly vanished, is made to live again here – disclosed, cannily and heartbreakingly, as once it too yielded up its author's mind.' Rachel Cusk

‘What a remarkable writer she is. She is piercingly, even laceratingly observant, and every remembered detail has the sharpness of a good photograph. And yet for all its brilliance of detail and its black comedy the memoir is heavy with atmophere. It's a very startling and daring memoir; the more I read it the more unsettling it becomes.’ Helen Dunmore

‘I was riveted. It’s raw, it’s distressing and it’s full of piercing insights into a novelist’s mind.’ Margaret Forster

About the author

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.

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2010
6 May
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
176
Pages
PUBLISHER
Fourth Estate
SELLER
HarperCollins Australia Pty Limited
SIZE
1.1
MB
Lives of Girls and Women Lives of Girls and Women
2015
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016
2016
A Slanting of the Sun: Stories A Slanting of the Sun: Stories
2015
The Best American Short Stories 2024 The Best American Short Stories 2024
2024
A Child's Book of True Crime A Child's Book of True Crime
2012
We Burn Daylight We Burn Daylight
2024
Wolf Hall Wolf Hall
2009
Bring Up the Bodies Bring Up the Bodies
2012
The Mirror and the Light The Mirror and the Light
2020
Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies
2012
A Place of Greater Safety A Place of Greater Safety
2009
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
2014
Rhythm of a Heart, Music of a Soul Rhythm of a Heart, Music of a Soul
2014
Behavioural Haiku Behavioural Haiku
2019
Death at the Sign of the Rook Death at the Sign of the Rook
2024
Anything is Possible Anything is Possible
2017
Oh William! Oh William!
2021
Shrines of Gaiety Shrines of Gaiety
2022