Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel

Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel

Learning to Talk is a dazzling collection of short stories from the two-time winner of the Booker Prize and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Wolf Hall trilogy.

With a New Preface

In the wake of Hilary Mantel's brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.

Absorbing and evocative, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues. For the young narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out. In King Billy Is a Gentleman, the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. Curved Is the Line of Beauty is a story of friendship, faith and a near-disaster in a scrap-yard. The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In Third Floor Rising, she watches, amazed, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity.

With a deceptively light touch, Mantel illuminates the poignant experiences of childhood that leave each of us forever changed.

A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat...Mantel's narrators never tell everything they know, and that's why they're worth listening to, carefully. --USA Today

Her short stories always recognize other potential realities...Even the most straightforward of Mantel's tales retain a faintly otherworldly air. --The Washington Post

Hilary Mantel is the author of several best-selling novels, including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. The Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award were also given to Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy. A Change of Climate, A Place of Better Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, and Vacant Possession are some of her other works. She's also the author of the memoir Giving Up the Ghost. The Hawthornden Award was awarded to Mantel, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. Her husband and she live in England.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781250865366
ISBN 10	1250865360
Title	Learning to Talk
Author	Hilary Mantel
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Henry Holt & Company
Year published	2022-06-21
Number of pages	176
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable