I don't read thrillers, and this novel by the "Wolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies" master is not a thriller, but the way it dilated and slowed right when you knew something terrible was going to happen was so terrifying that I actually couldn't continue (for a few hours anyway). This not-thriller converts thrill into terror by discovering the Bad we cannot escape not in action or event but in people, the bad seeds whom no amount of "giving the benefit of the doubt" will help. But that describes most thrillers, with their Jeffrey Dalmers. What is different here is that Mantel tries out this idea of what we "work with" in other people in more mundane and benign but also more unavoidable settings: family, marriages, etc. So they become terrifying by association. The trauma at the center of the innocently titled "Change of Climate" happened decades before its present (the late 1970s) when Anna and Ralph Eldred are living in northern England (the windswept sea-version of Bronte terrain) with their big, chaotic do-gooder family. The tragedy occurred when The Eldreds were newlyweds running a mission in South Africa, less for religious purposes than for humanitarian ones, and were jailed for "terrorism" (i.e., congregating with Blacks and "coloreds".) Someone had been spying on them and reported their activities to the South African police. So the Eldreds are given the choice to either head back to England or go north to Botswana and run a ghostly missionary there. If they stay put, they'll be terrorized by the local Afrikaaners and the police will do nothing. The Eldreds are too proud to head home, but in Botswana they meet with much worse calamity. The husband, whose idea this mission was, has the kind of abstract sense of people that allows him to hope for them but also makes him blind to danger, and he ends up walking right into tragedy, trailing his wife et. al. after him. The thing is, his and her mistakes in judgement are not so far from what any of us "bleeding-heart" types (ie., everyone I know) would make. The book was scary enough that I had to haul out gloomy nostrums to recover. ("Trust your instincts." "Righteousness is just another name for pride." "Your worst fears are probably at least half right," etc. etc.) I'm doing okay now, though, probably out of a healthy defensive system: I found myself wondering if Mantel's domestic analogies for the novel's "heart of darkness" are quite justified.
I see another reader (John) on goodreads wrote something akin to 'Another great book that is difficult to recommend.' How true. Because this is a brilliant book, that will stick with me for years. It is powerful, on so many levels. Discussions around tables could go on for hours on the themes and ideas being toyed and teased. Yet, with quiet family drama, Mantel pokes at so much emotion, slithering in and striking where it hurts the most - it isn't exactly the type of book you wrap up and stick under the Christmas tree for your unsuspecting fellow bookworm. I am very GLAD I did not know how emotionally challenging the book would be or I probably would have avoided it, given my current mental state. Nor can I say it did anything positive to said mental state. However, the issues - religion, goodness, right / wrong, family mechanics, justice (or lack of), poverty, privilege - she nails many issues that are constantly on my mind when tackling my own work. I didn't feel so much jealousy or envy, more: this is how its done. Wondering if it deserved a small applause.A few places had me wondering if she would have used the same words / phrases now. Language of South African poverty and privilege has evolved and there still smacks of bit of colonialism attitude in some of the scenes. Yet, that may have been done on purpose to reflect the characters inner struggles with their own situation and prejudices and have nothing to do with Mantel's own views.
What do You think about A Change Of Climate (2010)?
This is a good story with some important themes. It is nicely plotted and satisfactorily concluded and the characters are well drawn. I wish I hadn't chosen to listen to it as an audio book though because I feel I missed a lot and I was sidetracked continually by the tone of voice and variety of accents used by the reader which completely dominated the story, particularly influencing my reactions to the characters. The reader chose to use a fragile, pathetic sounding tone for the main character and so it was difficult to identify with her and yet she was an incredibly strong character who deserved our empathy. There was a similar problem with some of the other female characters. I might reread it later when I've forgotten the intricacies of the plot.
—Fionnuala
This is my new favorite Mantel (every one of her books becomes my favorite right after I read it). One of her non-historical novels, it's set in 1970's Apartheid S. Africa and in England in the 1990's. Almost anything I say of the plot is too much, so I'll say very little: A young missionary couple goes to S. Africa in the seventies and something almost unspeakably horrifying happens to them there. Like the good Britons they are, they come back to the UK with the past buried deep. But twenty years and several kids later, it resurfaces and sunders the couple in a heart-breaking way. Toward the end of this spare, beautiful novel (almost no one writes with the powerful economy Mantel has mastered), I couldn't imagine how she was going to end the story, how she could possibly draw it to a satisfying finish. But she does. I finished the book one afternoon in a hotel as my husband and I were waiting around for one activity or another around a family wedding. We were both reading quietly, and I turned the final page. Mantel's concluding paragraphs hit me like a physical blow in the chest, and tears sprang to my eyes, alarming my husband. I'm still in amazement. I'd seen all Mantel's threads, and as a writer myself, I'd tried to follow her flow of thought, her planning of the novel--and failed. The most amazing thing is that, now, the ending feels inevitable. How could it have ended any other way?
—Anastasia Hobbet
A ravishing and cleverly structured novel which sustains its tensions until the very last page. The sections set in South Africa are as gripping and exciting as the best of thrillers. The sections set in Norfolk radiate with searing and often humorous insights into family life. Mantel is brilliant with dialogue. This is a novel about secrets – how it’s not so much us who keep secrets but how secrets keep us, and how they “wear us away, from the inside out”. It’s also a novel about faith, how illusory, self-serving and misguided it can be. And about the difficulties of forgiveness. The outline of the plot as follows: Ralph and Anna Eldred live in the big Red House in Norfolk, raising their four children and devoting their lives to charity. The constant flood of “good souls and sad cases”, children plucked from the squalor of East London streets for a breath of countryside air, hides the growing crisis in their own family, the disillusionment of their children, the fissures in their marriage. Memories of their time as missionaries in South Africa and Botswana, of the terrible African tragedies that have shaped the rest of their lives, refuse to be put to rest and threaten to destroy the fragile peace they have built for themselves and their children.
—Pj
