Signpost to Childhood

I’m biased as in my eyes, Mantel can not put a pen wrong. The seven short stories in Learning to Talk transported me back to my own childhood as no other writings have. When you can almost completely identify with another’s memories as described by an accomplished writer, what’s not to like?

I was transported back to my own childhood by descriptions of the constant moving to new houses and the accompanying upheavals, by the absent father and the associated embarrassment of the child, but perhaps most startling were the descriptions of every-day family life and the associated now archaic vocabulary.

In “Curved is the Line of Beauty”, the family gets lost as the substitute father attempts to navigate the northern English countryside with not just the absence of GPS, but with the absence of “signposts”. The children draw with “double-ended pencils”. The children roam free in an urban countryside, getting lost in a car-wrecking site. None of their adults in their families even notice their absence. Mundane stuff but the language and the un-supervision is that of my own childhood.

Being six and saying the F word out loud when no one is around, just to hear yourself say it. Maybe all kids did. I remember I did, though I said “F god”, to see what would happen.

The realization that one’s mother doesn’t know everything. The surprise of it. Getting into a “good” school and concerns over the cost of the school uniform. Davey Crockett hats. Doctor Kildare on the TVs of the neighbors.

Despising the baby brother and the wonder of him. Eating plums. Wondering what to call father substitutes and at the stupidity of adults.

“Destroyed” tells the story of two dogs with opposite personalities. I’m not a dog person but was quite drawn in by this little story.

The final story, “Giving up the Ghost” has a lot of detail on Mantel’s childhood up to the end of elementary school when she she sits for the “Eleven Plus” an exam that with determine her academic future.

It is at this stage that her mother moves on, and Mantel writes, My childhood ended, so, in this occluded way: darkened by the smoke from my mother’s burning boats..

And there endeth the collection. I enjoyed all the stories but how much was my enjoyment to do with a perceived shared past? For apart from the Catholicism, of which I was spared, there were so many similarities.

I’m not sure. The stories need to be read as standalone. There’re no obvious connective thread apart from the subject matter. The writing is beautiful, crisp and evocative. The final story is set apart in that it details Mantel’s pre-twelve year’s in chronological order. The others highlight discrete events or feelings.

Read them if you enjoy Mantel. You will not be disappointed. ( )

Hilary’s mother leader of department store in Manchester,UK.

Incredible book. She tries to explain in a preface, but I’m still not clear how much of this is fiction and how much memoir. I guess it doesn’t matter much. Astonishingly beautiful and powerful writing about how it feels to be a child and how those feelings are remembered later.

Here are some quotes from the book that I figured out how to export from the Kindle app. Do you agree with me about the strength of her writing?


“The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me.”


“When I was very small, small enough to trip every time on the raised curbstone outside the back door, the dog Victor used to take me for a walk. We would proceed at caution across the yard, my hand plunged deep into the ruff of bristly fur at the back of his neck. He was an elderly dog, and the leather of his collar had worn supple and thin. My fingers curled around it, while sunlight struck stone and slate, dandelions opened in the cracks between paving stones, and old ladies aired themselves in doorways, nodding on kitchen chairs and smoothing their skirts over their knees. Somewhere else, in factories, fields and coal mines, England went dully on.”


“In that one moment it seemed to me that the world was blighted, and that every adult throat bubbled, like a garbage pail in August, with the syrup of rotting lies.”


“There should be support groups, like a twelve-step program, for young people who hate being young.”

( )

Finely told short stories. ( )

I liked the writing in this book overall, but I'm not sure I needed to be a part of Mantel's attempt to make sense of her upbringing. Since it was so specific to the United Kingdom, I know I missed a lot, and it did not prompt me to do a lot of research. I am more interested in continuing to read her fiction. ( )