Picador Modern Classics: Giving Up the Ghost : A Memoir (Hardcover)

from Cariola

Mantel's memoir focuses on three main aspects of her life: her dysfunctional family, her relationship to Catholicism, and her ongoing health issues. She, her parents, and her two younger brothers lived with her maternal grandparents during her early years; she was particularly close to her grandf...

from nmele

This brief but moving memoir is difficult to write about, because one starts thinking Mantel is writing about her experiences with the supernatural, but its concluding pages are very personal. It took courage to write this, and considerable effort .

from bhowell

I read almost half of this book in a used book store so had to buy it. I found it fascinating and finished it that evening. Ms. Mantel's powerful intellect sustained her through a difficult childhood and an adulthood blighted by ill health.

from SandDune

This short memoir by Hilary Mantel focuses on two main aspects of her life: her somewhat difficult childhood and her long periods of (misdiagnosed) ill-health. Of the two, it was the first that I found most interesting. Growing up as a young child in a Irish Catholic home in England she seems to ...

from elsyd

This book is truly a Gem! As a person who can remember my own past from an age before I could talk, I could totally relate to the child, Hilary. Also, having raised a precocious child, I could so see parallels. What a difficult life Hilary Mantel has endured, and what a gift she has given the wor...