Vol. XXI, #1 David Antin

Vol. XXI, #1 David Antin


Review of Contemporary Fiction

Fludd and Every Day Is Mother's Day, by Hilary Mantel

reviewed by Sally E. Parry

Owl Books, 2000. 181 pp. Paper: $13.00; Owl Books, 2000. 225 pp. Paper: $13.00.

The disturbing world of British novelist Hilary Mantel has until now been little known by the American reading public. Henry Holt has remedied that omission by publishing for the first time in the United States six of her novels, most recently the quirky Fludd, and the darker Every Day Is Mother’s Day. Both novels take place in twentieth-century Britain, a land that is so haunted by its historical and spiritual past it almost seems poisoned.

Fludd is the stronger of the two novels; it interrogates the nature of faith in a way that would amaze Trollope. Father Angwin, the priest of the dismal village of Fetherhoughton, pretends to have faith even though he lost it thirty years ago. Something supernatural happens to cause him to investigate his faith, although it’s not clear whether Fludd is an otherworldy visitor, a new curate, an angel, a devil, or a seventeenth-century alchemist. Fludd helps him defy his bishop, who has ordered that the statues of saints be taken away from the church, and aids in his struggles against a group of strong-minded nuns who spend their time alternating between cruelly educating children and working on a tapestry of the plagues of Egypt. There is black humor as well in Every Day Is Mother’s Day, but little hope. Set in modern London, the novel details the miserable life of a widow with a mentally disturbed daughter, Muriel, and the complications arising from Muriel’s pregnancy. There are possibly supernatural beings in this novel too, although they may also be the evil vibrations of a house where memories of child abuse and murder exist.

Mantel’s prose is striking and witty, especially when the out of the ordinary happens. Her vision of the world is bleakly humorous and allows for the possibility, however remote, of a kind of grace.