A review by ruthlessly
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

1.0

OKAY. I only read this over like 3 days or so, but it felt like a life time.

I'm beginning to think Mantel and I just don't get on. This is the second book I've read of hers and this conclusion is irritating, because I have Wolf Hall in my bedroom to be read but!! Fundamentally, her prose doesn't grip me. I don't care about her characters, in general, and that's one of the most frustrating parts to me.

BUT I have other complaints about this collection. For one, the title alone suggests that the stories will be politicised and tbqh I find it SUPER LAZY that they aren't. Many of these are, in fact, strangely apolitical -- there are some exceptions, obviously, with the actual Assassination of Margaret Thatcher story, the first one and perhaps some hints in others but overall nope. There's a lot of alluding to and playing with the supernatural here but, honestly, it's fucking boring. It's not terribly creative. I didn't see anything new or interesting here. One of my biggest complaints, though, is where is the unifying theme??? HONESTLY. I don't like collections which are random assortments of stories, all shelved together. I don't see any common thread here, uniting everything. There's some tenuous links, but I find the lack of cohesion incredibly frustrating. I've heard people say they're linked by the supernatural, by eeriness, and I guess that could be a link -- EXCEPT not all of them are supernatural so HUGE QUESTION MARK. I also don't agree that Mantel is good with creating suspense and horror (especially here, but that was my opinion of Beyond Black as well).

Reading this was, overall, a really frustrating experience. I wanted to like it so much more than I did. I know the rating is low, but I didn't enjoy this. After a certain point, I was reading because I wanted to know with grim certainty that I was right and that this was terrible.

Of course, there were some stories I liked -- the titular one was pretty good, I liked the story about Morna fading away (warning for eating disorders though!) called The Heart Fails Without Warning. I don't think I minded the story about the author but I forget what it's called and tbh I would rather eat my own fist than go back and find out.