Greetings from Hoxton Square where we’ve been browsing our backlist of classic memoirs and revisiting Slightly Foxed Edition No. 37: Giving up the Ghost.
Hilary Mantel has said that this powerful and haunting book came about by accident. She never intended to write a memoir, but the sale of a much-loved cottage in Norfolk prompted her to write about the death of her stepfather, and from there ‘the whole story of my life began to unravel’. It is a story of ‘wraiths and phantoms’, a story not easy to forget.
Giving up the Ghost is a compulsively readable and ultimately optimistic account of what made Hilary Mantel the writer she is, full of courage, insight and wry humour. If you are tempted to add it to your SF collection, then you’ll find links to this edition below.
Meantime, we do hope you enjoy reading this excerpt from the opening chapter.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF office staff
Jennie, Anna, Hattie, Jess & Helen