"Dazzlingly written...a highly unorthodox account of what is essentially unsayable about the inward uncharted life." –Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
"The matter is bitter, but Mantel's angular wit is as unquenchable as her anger; the reading experience is reliably exhilarating because of the sheer excellence of the writing." –
New York Times Book Review "Blazing insights [and] poetic discourses that rattle the soul...Mantel doesn't simply hit close to home, she knocks at our closets and opens our doors." –
The Boston Globe "Mantel's talents are stronger than her misfortunes...[this book comes] from the mind of a fine author, whose body has imposed its own terrible penances." –
The Washington Post
"
Giving Up the Ghost combines the urgency and observation that steer a memoir into the heart of a reader's own experience. I have been touched and also enthralled by this fine book." –Carol Shields, author of
The Stone Diaries and
Unless "A stunning evocation of an ill-fitting childhood and a womanhood blighted by medical ineptitude. Hilary Mantel's frank and beautiful memoir is impossible to put down and impossible to forget." –Clare Boylan, author of
Beloved Stranger