Hilary Mantel

A Change of Climate

I’d like to present you the book of modern English writer Hilary Mantel “A
Change of Climate”. It was first published in 1994. At the time The
Observer described it as the best book she had written. The novel has also been
identified as one of the best of the 1990s.
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel (born in 1952) is an English writer whose work
includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories.
She has twice been awarded the Booker Prize for her novels “Wolf Hall”, and
“Bring Up the Bodies”. Mantel was the first woman to receive the award twice.

To begin with, “A Change of Climate” is a novel, written in 1994.

The theme of the book is a great loss that influences the whole life.
As for the idea, I think, it is “every action leads to certain consequences, you
should always mind what you do”.
Talking about the plot, “A Change of Climate”  is set in Norfolk in 1980,
and concerns Ralph and Anna Eldred. They seem to be a nice couple – the example
for everyone. Having four children, they also are involved in charity – taking in
various lost souls at its Norfolk farmhouse. Even their children learn early to
divide these visitors into two categories: Sad Cases and Good Souls. But
something always seems to interrupt their normal flow of their life – some dark
memory, tied closely to anguish and pain. They are always in some argument with
their children and with each other and even with their own selves. This is the
exposition.
The complication takes most of the book: we know that right after their
marriage Ralph and Anna went to Africa to “change a climate” and go for some
charity there too. But one of the main reasons of their escape is parents’
pressure and desire for self-confirmation.
Their life went down one African summer, turning the peaceful life into a
nightmare. A couple worked for a missionary society in a dangerous and crowded
South African township, when they offended some local man in Bechuanaland.
They never thought that a simple act of scolding someone for robbery (justly) may
lead to such consequences, but a couple obviously had no idea about the local
traditions. So the seemingly ordinary life was interrupted by the stealing of one of
the Ralph and Anna’s babies. Author makes a conclusion that it wasn’t just a kind
of a simple revenge. She mentioned that it was a bitter experience of all the locals:
sometimes the children are stolen and given to some “sacrificer” for terrible
inhuman acts... This event was a climax of the story, I believe.
Everything that had been before this event didn’t matter since then. Life
turned into misery despite the fact that both of the couple were incredibly trying to
pretend that everything is fine in order not to show anyone the real dark side of
their broken life. The situation only complicates when Ralph gets involved into an
affair at the side. However he loves Anna, she can’t forgive him not for the
unspeakable loss that happened in Africa, nor for his preset affair. Their feelings
will never be the same.
Denouement is the desire of Anna for divorce and her realization of the fact,
that she wants to live a bit for herself, no more Ralph, no more pain of his betrayal.

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.

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 she struggled with its formal plot and
structure.