Hilary Mantel Stared Down Her Past, and the World’s, With Steely Resolve – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/books/review/hilary-mantel-appraisal.html

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unafraid of stating her sometimes fierce views. Her story collection “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher” — its title story was the result of a painkiller-induced fantasy Mantel once had in the hospital — caused a literary maelstrom. Lord Tebbit, a former cabinet minister, called it “a sick book from a sick mind”; there were calls for a police investigation. (For her part, Mantel said she was “bemused” at the suggestion that “the police should interest themselves in the case of a fictional assassination of a person who was already dead.”)

Deeply intellectual in her thinking, Mantel was also candid about her personal struggles — with poverty, with early professional setbacks, with how people perceived her, with endometriosis and chronic, debilitating pain — and rigorous in her self-appraisal..

Mom.