Ink in the Blood
A Hospital Diary
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3.8 • 44 Ratings
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- £0.99
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
Just after ‘Bring Up the Bodies’ author Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker for ‘Wolf Hall’, she fell gravely ill. This is her remarkable hospital diary.
Originally published in the London Review of Books, this diary by the acclaimed author Hilary Mantel explores in forensic detail her loss of dignity, her determination, the concentration of the senses into an animalistic struggle to get through, and the attendant hallucinations she was plagued by during her stay in hospital.
With her health now improved, and the acknowledgement of the Man Booker prize-winning follow-up to ‘Wolf Hall’, ‘Bring Up the Bodies’ as one of our greatest works of fiction, ‘Ink in the Blood’ remains a significant testament to the traumas of illness, and one of the most incredible and haunting essays published in a very long time.
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.
Customer Reviews
Fascinating
I read this account of Hilary Mantell,s illness and slow recovery with increasing amazement and envy that someone clearly so ill is able to focus on recording her experience and use her need to write to help cope with what is happening to her body.
With no self pity she recounts the effect of drugs and her observations about her condition, the nursing staff and how they appear, the supreme effort required to eat the smallest amount of food and the sheer amount of energy needed to deal with the treatment required to aid her recovery.
A brilliant writer who even manages to turn, what must have been a truly horrendous experience into an interesting, very readable short story.