An Experiment in Love: A Novel

Hilary Mantel

Apr 2007 · Sold by Holt Paperbacks

About this ebook

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

It was the year after Chappaquiddick, and all spring Carmel McBain had watery dreams about the disaster. Now she, Karina, and Julianne were escaping the dreary English countryside for a London University hall of residence. Interspersing accounts of her current position as a university student with recollections of her childhood and an ever difficult relationship with her longtime schoolmate Karina, Carmel reflects on a generation of girls desiring the power of men, but fearful of abandoning what is expected and proper. When these bright but confused young women land in late 1960s London, they are confronted with a slew of new preoccupations--sex, politics, food, and fertility--and a pointless grotesque tragedy of their own.

Hilary Mantel's magnificent novel examines the pressures on women during the early days of contemporary feminism to excel--but not be too successful--in England's complex hierarchy of class and status.

Ratings and reviews

I can only give this book two stars as well it really was quite boring to read. I thought it would be a bit more eventful but the only exciting thing that happens in this book is...well I'm not really sure what really was exciting. Usually when you think of a book that you like the characters face some grave task or find themselves in an impossible situation that you want them to escape or conquer through any means possible. In the case of Mantel's novel she doesn't give me any of this, the main character is forgettable and doesn't even strike any chord with me. I find this to be probably the worse thing about the novel, the lack of good characters. There are some good characters in this book but Mantel refuses to give them any light, instead she sends a giant spotlight to one woman and that pretty much ends the book. You can't expect anyone to read a book where it only delves into one character into any great detail :S But wait there were two main characters weren't there? Well Karina deserves a mention here but really what's the point of writing her in as a source of antagonism for your protagonist and not really going into the details of their troubled past. I say this because the author aptly goes and writes a few chapters of utter backstory on the history between the two women but no where in the book did I ever get any sense of new information. These backstories simply reinforced what was already established by their state of family and living conditions and social boundaries. Overall I had to give it two stars because Mantel is able to keep your attention however in this experiment of reading I have to say big FAIL. The only reprieve I get is that I can now finally read something else.

Me facina

About the author

Hilary Mantel twice won the Booker Prize, for her best-selling novel Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The final novel of the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and won critical acclaim around the globe. Mantel authored over a dozen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, and the memoir Giving Up the Ghost.