• Cover
Pain is one of the great pleasures of reading Mantel. Thematized early, the first novel’s daughter objects against her mother, “Up the stairs you would have come, rushing to take my pain for yourself.” When that pain becomes “a frenzy…an unstemmable riot of pain, hers and hers alone,” mother duly appears to orchestrate the experience, making “every day… Mother’s Day.” Imagined scalpings, the eyeball in the spoon, testicles fed to dogs: violent little excurses punctuate a style Janet Malcolm praises as incisive, “cutting.”—Forthcoming in Regina Janes’ guest column on Hilary Mantel in Salmagundi #222-223, Spring-Summer 2024