I set upon reading the author's memoirs, and the short story collection, learning to talk, which too is somewhat biographical, upon hearing of her passing away. I still have the third installment of the Cromwell trilogy to read - and hopefully I'll be able to do so this year.
Giving Up the Ghost is a memoir she wrote somewhat early in her life, back in 2003, when she was just 51. Her major successes, that of Wolf Hall, and Bring Up the Bodies, were still a good 6 and 9 years away, respectively. So this memoir is, not touched by her being recognized as a world famous author (to the degree that the Booker awards brought her - although she's had literary success prior), but rather as an effort towards coming into terms with her own life - giving up her own ghosts - and approaching the remaining twenty years of her life, and as we now see her most successful years as an author.
In these pages she explains, on her relationship with her step father, a rather difficult man, albeit a good man, who had done his best towards her step daughter in his rather complaining way. I guess even complaining fathers were not that uncommon in the days that Hilary was a teen ( leave alone step fathers), and it is clear that in hindsight Hilary has sentiments of affection for Jack.
"He was all we had now for a husband and a father, even though he was neither of these, and my mother didn’t cease to remind me that not many men would have done what he did, take a family on. But why did she say this? It didn’t make sense to me. I was determined not to be grateful for what was simply inevitable; it was like thanking somebody for the fact that it’s Friday, or complimenting them on having a nose on their face. How could Jack have got her, without us? It wasn’t possible. It wouldn’t have worked."
The lines in which she describes how her life changed for one with prospects, made me think of the much maligned fifth year scholarship (from where I come from,) which some sectors call for removal, while it is undeniable that it has served its purpose many fold, for children who wouldn't have had that chance in life otherwise.
"When the day of the Eleven Plus results came, I was at home as usual, sick. I had no expectation that I would earn a grammar school place, and no particular hope of it. It seemed out of my hands— as it had been for grandad, whose parents couldn’t afford the uniform: as it had been for my mother, whose teachers had simply forgotten to enter her for the exam. Just after four o’clock Bernadette came to the door. I went to open it. She stood squarely on the front step and looked me up and down. ‘Ye’ve passed,’ she said, unsmiling.
.....
Passed. Who would have thought it? Passed. So I can have a life, I thought. Within a few weeks we were moving house: myself, not my father, my mother, Jack, the two little brothers and the one dog that was left. By the end of the summer we would be gone. We would be gone to another town."
The ghosts she wants to settle accounts with and give up for good, are primarily the very bad diagnosis she's repeatedly had for endometriosis, which she herself had to lookup and suggest to a doctor, and the treatment of which took away her chances of ever becoming a mother. She holds nothing back when explaining the terrible medical attention she received, as well as how her being a law student opinionated the doctors against her, in their thinking that she was biting more than she could chew in terms of her studies, simply because she was a woman. The convenient condition for them, that she had to suffer unto ? A psychiatric condition !
"Dr G, the psychiatrist, was remote and bald. He had as much chance of understanding a girl like me as he had of rising from his desk and skimming from the window on silver pinions. He soon diagnosed my problem: stress, caused by over ambition. This was a female complaint, one which people believed in, in those years, just as the Greeks believed that women were made ill by their wombs cutting loose and wandering about their bodies. I had told Dr G, in response to his questions about my family, that my mother was a fashion buyer in a large department store; it was true, for at the end of the sixties she had reinvented herself as a blonde, bought herself some new clothes and taken up a career. Oh really, said Dr G: how interesting. Thereafter, he referred to her place of work as ‘the dress shop’. If I were honest with myself, he asked, wouldn’t I rather have a job in my mother’s dress shop than study law? Wouldn’t the dress shop, when all’s said and done, be more in my line?"
The other ghosts that she had tried to rid of, was the children she never had, but who lived in her mind as possibilities, for whom her larders at home were full, the cupboards were stacked by the dozens of everything she bought!
In summary this is a heart rendering account of how she fought with the lot thrown her way by life, how she won some, and lost some due circumstances beyond her control. The silver lining of course was that we the reader, now know that she had international acclaim as an author - a two time Booker award winner, among other literary recognition. I am favoured to the belief that her fighting her demons in this memoir, gave her rejuvenated chance in life for her success.
This book, as well as "Learning to Talk" is highly recommended to fans of the author.
Rating: ****
Genre: Memoir
No comments:
Post a Comment