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Aug. 12th, 2009 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsMan, the cover on this edition of Hilary Mantel's The Giant, O'Brien is so inappropriate! It makes it look like it will be all chipper and amiable and ahahaha no. Also, the Publishers Weekly review is SO TERRIBLE and seems to consists mostly of "LOL IRISH! hahahaha" which is both offensive and misses the point SO HARD.
. . . but anyway I am not here to bitch about the Amazon page, I am here to actually talk about the book!
More than any other Hilary Mantel I've read, The Giant, O'Brien takes place in a kind of nightmare analogue of the real world - in this case, a grotesque eighteenth-century world well-stocked with corpses and disease and false hope. An Experiment in Love is a tight little trap of a mental box, but even though the titular Giant spends quite a lot of time quite literally trapped in a room, this book didn't feel anywhere near as claustrophobic to me. Here, the world of the imagination is vast; it's just that it's also full of horrors.
Most of the reviews seem to define the central conflict of the book as between Faith and Science - will the Giant's bones be claimed by the crazy graverobbing surgeon after he dies, or won't they? - but that's not how it struck me at all. It's not a conflict; you know straight out that the Giant will die and Hunter will claim the bones. Rather, the focus is on the stories that the Giant tells to others and Hunter tells to himself, the way imagination can become a trap in and of itself.
Mantel's prose, as usual, is addictive, her dialogue brilliant, and her worldview more than a little terrifying.
. . . but anyway I am not here to bitch about the Amazon page, I am here to actually talk about the book!
More than any other Hilary Mantel I've read, The Giant, O'Brien takes place in a kind of nightmare analogue of the real world - in this case, a grotesque eighteenth-century world well-stocked with corpses and disease and false hope. An Experiment in Love is a tight little trap of a mental box, but even though the titular Giant spends quite a lot of time quite literally trapped in a room, this book didn't feel anywhere near as claustrophobic to me. Here, the world of the imagination is vast; it's just that it's also full of horrors.
Most of the reviews seem to define the central conflict of the book as between Faith and Science - will the Giant's bones be claimed by the crazy graverobbing surgeon after he dies, or won't they? - but that's not how it struck me at all. It's not a conflict; you know straight out that the Giant will die and Hunter will claim the bones. Rather, the focus is on the stories that the Giant tells to others and Hunter tells to himself, the way imagination can become a trap in and of itself.
Mantel's prose, as usual, is addictive, her dialogue brilliant, and her worldview more than a little terrifying.
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Date: 2009-08-13 01:51 am (UTC)>:( I would not call it a "conflict"! I also think Dualism with Capital Letters is rarely the best way to explain Mantel novels. I explain them to myself mostly by rocking back and forth in a corner and pretending I am not TERRIFIED TO LIVE IN THE WORLD.
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Date: 2009-08-13 02:03 am (UTC)I comfort myself by telling myself that Mantel-world is not our world . . . . La Mantel clearly comes from the land of La Mantel, where it is illegal to make beautiful writing out of things that are not hideously depressing. :(
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Date: 2009-08-13 04:05 am (UTC)People with NO BRAIN!
And I don't understand how THE MANTEL survives in the land of The Mantel.
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Date: 2009-08-13 04:20 am (UTC)Either that, or she's Drosselmeyer.