what if the part of TSH where richard almost dies from cold was the entire book, English, and much more about female friendship and your family... these are all good things btw ( )

An exquisite reminiscence of an English boarding school for women, an exploration of characters and friendships, all beautifully written, sprinkled with unexpected, vivid metaphors. ( )

Another dip into Hilary Mantel's backlist. An Experiment in Love is about a group of girls on the brink of adulthood away at college. It takes places in the 1960s and the main character is Carmel. She reflects on her childhood friendships and how they've changed as she grows. She also mentions her mother enough for the reader to realize that her experience in approaching adulthood is a reaction to her perception of her mother's life.

The young women are experimenting with life. Their relationships with men, with sex, with food and body image are all explored.

I couldn't shake the feeling, while I was reading this, that I knew this book and that the author was not Mantel. I'm not sure who I was thinking of - A.S. Byatt? early Margaret Atwood? Alice Munro?
I'm really not sure. But then in the last third of the book it turned into a Hilary Mantel novel. And I also don't really know what I mean by that!

So overall, yes, I thought this was a good book, and I'm glad I read it. ( )

A really engaging story, was totally unprepared for the ending. ( )

Mantel's gifts of machete-sharp observation and narration are on view here, and they are enough to make this worth reading. Even though I'm a pretty close contemporary of the girls and young women she portrays, the world of working-class England, suffocating "faith-based" schooling, Catholic religiosity, and the college system is all a foreign country to me (I'm a Yank). It all sounds truly awful. The travails and woes and nastiness of the "girls" were painfully familiar, and I didn't particular enjoy reading about any of them. You can see, though, Mantel's particular skill for the games people play, the ambiguities and paradoxes of character, how people you might mostly despise will surprise you with generosity, or how a core ugliness can be managed or overlooked until they leap out and appall you, whether in a girls' college or in the Tudor court or the revolutionary tribunals in France. An early effort, but you can see the brilliance beginning to smolder and flare. ( )