A Change of Climate by Hilary MantelAuthor Website Amazon (UK) Amazon.com HarperCollins (paperback), 2002
272 Pages
From the double Man Booker prize-winning author of 'Wolf Hall' and 'Bring Up the Bodies', this is an epic yet subtle family saga about broken trusts and buried secrets.
Ralph and Anna Eldred live in the big Red House in Norfolk, raising their four children and devoting their lives to charity. The constant flood of 'good souls and sad cases', children plucked from the squalor of the East London streets for a breath of fresh countryside air, hides the growing crises in their own family, the disillusionment of their children, the fissures in their marriage.
Memories of their time as missionaries in South Africa and Botswana, of the terrible African tragedies that have shaped the rest of their lives, refuse to be put to rest and threaten to destroy the fragile peace they have built for themselves and their children.
This is a breathtakingly intelligent novel that asks the most difficult questions. Is there anything one can never forgive? Is tragedy ever deserved? Can you ever escape your own past? A literary family saga written with the skill and subtlety of a true master, this is Hilary Mantel at her best.
On the day of Felix Palmer's funeral, his wife, Ginny met his mistress, Emma. They had met before, of course. The county of Norfolk is not so populous that they could have avoided each other. Their conduct at these meetings had been shaped by Ginny's lofty and wilful ignorance of the situation: by Emma's sangfroid: by Felix's natural desire to maintain an arrangement that suited him.
Hilary Mantel is one of my favourite writers. She got me to enjoy literary fiction for the first time and got me into historical fiction thanks to Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies.
I loved A Change of Climate. I found this book incredibly sad at times. My heart went out to Ralph and Anna and the terrible things they experienced in Africa. They experienced humiliation and disgrace and then lost their child in horrific circumstances. Anna's pain was very real and their decision to bury what happened completely believable. I thought the characters in the novel were well-written and interesting. I found the ending of the novel very upsetting and very sad. Its clear what happened in Africa changed Ralph and Anna and is the root of their current pain. The end of the novel is realistic though - Anna has never gotten over what happened in Africa while Ralph appears to have, so really, they're better off apart. I loved the way Mantel brought Norfolk and Africa to vivid life. A Change of Climate will be in my head for a long time.
I'd highly recommend A Change of Climate, a brilliant, haunting book.
