If journalism is the first draft of history, then Andy Beckett's description of Britain in the early 1980s is history version 1.5. Using a range of memoirs, contemporary accounts and personal interviews with man of the key individuals from the era, he offers a idiosyncratic description of the period that is leavened with his own memories of his life in Britain during that time. His argument is a somewhat contrarian one: that these years were not just the beginnings of a lurch rightward as has often been relieved, but a time of dynamic change in many other respects. In Beckett's view people like "Red Ken" Livingston and the Greenham Common protestors were in every respect as much an embodiment of the transformation taking place as was Margaret Thatcher, and with a legacy nearly as important to making Britain the country it is today. His analysis is provocative, as is his highlighting of how much of this change was built upon the achievements of the previous decades rather than reflecting a rejection of them. For anyone interested in learning ore about the history of Britain during this era this is an excellent book to read, one that hopefully Beckett will build upon with a successor volume that describes further how the decade unfolded from this provocative start.

Few prime ministers loom as large in the British historical imagination as does Margaret Thatcher. Idolized by her supporters and demonized by her detractors, her historical image is as much myth as it is reality, one created in part by Thatcher's own efforts to shape her public profile in politically appealing terms. One of the great achievements of John Campbell in his excellent first volume of his biography of Thatcher is his success in separating the myths from the story of her life and assessing their contribution to defining her image.

This Campbell does starting with the image from the subtitle, that of 'the grocer's daughter'. He skillfully deconstructs this legend, noting that Margaret Roberts's upbringing was neither as humble nor as idyllic as she made it seem and that her father, Alfred was not the hero she would later make him out to be. What emerges instead is a hard-working and determined young woman who pursued politics from a young age. Her career was facilitated greatly by her marriage to Denis Thatcher, who provided emotional and financial support that was indispensable to her rise in politics.

Thatcher's work ethic and drive soon won her office in Edward Heath's cabinet as Secretary of State for Education. Here she gained firsthand exposure to the Whitehall bureaucracy for the first time, an experience that left her less than impressed. Yet even after Heath's defeat in the two successive elections of 1974, his position appeared secure enough to make a challenge to his leadership of the Conservative Party seem foolhardy, and Thatcher's challenge came after more prominent Tory leaders passed on the opportunity. Yet her campaign tapped a deep vein of resentment, and she triumphed against all expectations.

Throughout this, Campbell notes the fortuitous confluence of events that aided her rise. This was best illustrated by her assumption of the Conservative Party leadership at the moment when an opening for her ideology emerged with the breakdown of the democratic socialist consensus. With unemployment swelling to levels not seen since the 1930s, Thatcher was able to exploit the inability of the Labour government to grapple with the problem. The book ends with the Conservative victory in the 1979 general election and Thatcher embarking on her transformative 11-year premiership, the subject of his next volume.

Impressively researched and absorbingly written, Campbell's book is a triumph of the biographical art. He succeeds in presenting a judicious portrait of Thatcher, one that approaches her with skepticism yet never fails to giver her her due. It is the indispensable starting point for understanding this complex and controversial figure, one that is unlikely to be bettered for its description of Thatcher's early years and their role in her political legend.

There is a good variety of stories presented in this short book. They are so original and so creative; they are a joy to contemplate. Finally, an author has provided something to read that is not the same-old, same-old variation of a tired idea, not something that feels like it has been hastily written to meet a deadline or written simply for television or a future movie. Each story is unique and different in its development of some common themes.
One story tackles a clash of cultures in a Middle Eastern country, another challenges the behavior of children and possibly even how the sins of some are visited upon them as adults, another tale intimates that there are alternate lifestyles, others insinuate the existence of magic or the supernatural, another exposes infidelity as its theme, still another offers up how disabilities are actually viewed differently in the eyes of each beholder, and the final piece exposes the radical effects of political conflicts in a story about “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher”. Each story explores the psychology behind the behavior of the characters. The idea that “what goes around comes around” kept returning to me as I read. In one instance it involved a $20 tip, in another, the love of a child, and in a third, the allusion to one’s attachment to a pet.
Each of the stories is told in its own individual style, and the voice of this author, blends wit, mystery, and the enigmatic, to build up just the right amount of tension and possibility without causing the reader to have to suspend disbelief. The stories offer a concise and insightful study of the motivation behind certain behaviors which alter our lives in positive and negative ways, the emotions that control us affecting our mental and physical health, and the prejudices that color our personal perception of things. The book is excellent and each story invites stimulating discussions as each explores the intricacies of our minds with all of our strengths and defects.

This is my first Mantel. I’ve been postponing reading the first two volumes of the Cromwell trilogy, waiting for the third volume to come out predictably in 2016. One does not tackle a twice-awarded-writer-with-the-Man-Booker-Prize without having everything in one big bundle to make a proper assessment...Nevertheless here goes my first take on Hilary Mantel, for what it’s worth.

One of my favourite things in life is reading that truly astounding book at the right juncture in time, ie, a book that mysteriously echoes and enriches my current thoughts. I think this was one of those (imperfect/perfect) books. There is a peculiar comfort in reading a book whose structures and operations mimic what, I think, literature should be all about. One of the things I like the most about literature is to read it and later on write about it. Literature for me is all about a set of interlocking conventions (a system), and how we can read this so-called system into something meaningful.

This short-story collection is a good example of this. First of all it’s a mixed bag, ie, we have The Magnificent, The So-and-So, and The-Not-So-Good (there are not really bad short stories here). What is immediately noticeable is Mantel’s use of language (the system). What better way to evaluate a write’s skills than in the shorter form? I’ve always stated that there’s no better way to “see” the inner skills of a writer. In the shorter forms the writer cannot hide behind the usual literary contraptions: plot, complex character development, etc.

In this aspect Mantel succeeds entirely, ie, her use of language drew me in, revealing the horror that just lies beneath the surface of our everyday life, to reveal the inner structure of reality, much like Gonçalo M. Tavares (vide review) is able to do:

 “I knew not to mention her name and the pressure of not mentioning her made her, in my imagination, beaten thin and flat, attenuated, starved away, a shadow of herself, so I was no longer sure whether she existed when I was not with her.” (From “Comma”)

“And we saw – nothing; we saw something not yet become; we saw something, not a face but perhaps, I thought, when I thought about it later, perhaps a negotiating position for a face, perhaps a loosely imagined notion of a face, like God’s when he was trying to form us; we saw a blank, we saw a sphere, it was without feature, it was without meaning, and its flesh seemed to run from the bone.” (From “Comma”)

"What I had taken to be stucco was in fact some patent substance newly glued to the front wall: it was grayish-white and crinkled, like a split-open brain, or nougat chewed by a giant." (From “How Shall I Know You”, my favourite short story in this collection).

“I did my act on autopilot, except that when it came to my influences I went a bit wild and invited a Portuguese writer who I said knocked Pessoa into a socket hat. The golden young man kept invading my mind, and I thought I’d quite like to go bed with someone of that ilk, by way of change. Wasn’t everybody due a change?” (“How Shall I Know You”)

As I said, not all of the stories are successful. Sometimes we get the feeling that Mantel just ran out of steam by the end of some them, but the ones that work, oh my…Almost all of the short stories here are a wonderful example of the show-don’t-tell type; they show everything, almost, and tell nothing. What more can I ask for in a literary work? In this aspect Mantel belongs to the Gonçalo M. Tavares, António Lobo Antunes and Philip K. Dick lineage.

Without having read her other body-of-work, ie, having read only this collection, Hilary Mantel may be one of the best writers of her time, and there's no better evidence of her skills than this short-story collection. I’ll refrain from further praise. I’ll wait for the Cromwell trilogy to fully state my case.

Is it possible to name a writer as the best prose stylist of our time? Should the discussion be exclusively Anglo-centric? I think not. I can give two wonderful examples of writers writing in Portuguese, but with numerous translations in English, that in my mind could be real contenders for this elusive “prize”: Gonçalo M. Tavares (he pushes the boundaries of what fiction is or should be in a way I haven’t seen in a writer writing in English in recent years – vide review above), and António Lobo Antunes (I always thought that his writing is very god-like, ie, Lobo Antunes can write as if God himself were choosing the words for him; it all fits perfectly in his sentences).

I invite you to name a few writers having this “illuminating”, reality-behind-the-surface quality (in English or in any other language). Any thoughts on this? I’m curious to know.