A Change of Climate - Hilary Mantel (South African Interest)

Fourth Estate, 2010, softcover, 338 pages, condition: as new.

"This is my new favorite Mantel (every one of her books becomes my favorite right after I read it). One of her non-historical novels, it's set in 1970's Apartheid South Africa and in England in the 1990's. Almost anything I say of the plot is too much, so I'll say very little: A young missionary couple goes to S. Africa in the seventies and something almost unspeakably horrifying happens to them there. Like the good Britons they are, they come back to the UK with the past buried deep. But twenty years and several kids later, it resurfaces and sunders the couple in a heart-breaking way. Toward the end of this spare, beautiful novel (almost no one writes with the powerful economy Mantel has mastered), I couldn't imagine how she was going to end the story, how she could possibly draw it to a satisfying finish. But she does. I finished the book one afternoon in a hotel as my husband and I were waiting around for one activity or another around a family wedding. We were both reading quietly, and I turned the final page. Mantel's concluding paragraphs hit me like a physical blow in the chest, and tears sprang to my eyes, alarming my husband. I'm still in amazement. I'd seen all Mantel's threads, and as a writer myself, I'd tried to follow her flow of thought, her planning of the novel--and failed. The most amazing thing is that, now, the ending feels inevitable. How could it have ended any other way?"

                                                                                           THE AUTHOR IS TWICE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE.