7.6 /10 1 Votes7.6
Language English Media type Print Originally published 1994 Page count 352 Genres Fiction, Novel | 3.8/5 Goodreads Publication date 1994 (UK) 1997 (US) Pages 352 (UK), 336 (US) Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publisher Viking Books (UK)Owl Books (US) ISBN 0-670-83051-8 (UK)ISBN 0-8050-5205-4 (US) Hilary Mantel books Eight Months on Ghazzah, Vacant Possession, Every Day is Mother's Day, Fludd, An Experiment in Love | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A Change of Climate is a novel by English author Hilary Mantel, first published in 1994 by Viking Books. At the time The Observer described it as the best book she had written. It was published in the United States by Henry Holt in 1997 and was recognised by the New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of that year. The novel has also been identified as one of the best of the 1990s.
Contents
Plot introduction
A Change of Climate is set in Norfolk in 1980, and concerns Ralph and Anna Eldred, parents of four children, whose family life threatens to disintegrate in the course of one summer, when memories which they have repressed fiercely for twenty years resurface to disrupt the purposive and peaceful lives they have tried to lead since a catastrophic event overtook them early in their married life. The action of the novel moves back to the late 1950s, when they worked for a missionary society in a dangerous and crowded South African township, and then follows the couple to Bechuanaland, where in the loneliness of a remote mission station an unspeakable loss occurs. The novel is about the possibility or impossibility of forgiveness, the clash of ideals and brutality, and the need to acknowledge that lives are broken before they can begin to be mended.
Inspiration
Mantel states that the idea for the book came in two parts. In Botswana in 1977 she read law reports about medicine murders and the theft of children; later she heard of an 'apparently happily married couple who suddenly split up after doing all the hard work of bringing up a family'. Mantel brought these two parts of the story together to form the novel. She goes on to reveal that the novel was the most difficult she had ever written (as of 2010) as she struggled with its formal plot and structure.