Book description
From the double Man Booker prize-winning author of 'Wolf Hall', this is
a dark fable of lost faith and awakening love amidst the moors.
Fetherhoughton is a drab, dreary town somewhere in a magical, half-real
1950s north England, a preserve of ignorance and superstition protected
against the advance of reason by its impenetrable moor-fogs. Father
Angwin, the town's cynical priest, has lost his faith, and wants nothing
more than to be left alone. Sister Philomena strains against the
monotony of convent life and the pettiness of her fellow nuns. The rest
of the town goes about their lives in a haze, a never-ending procession
of grim, grey days stretching ahead of them.
Yet all of that is about to change. A strange visitor appears one
stormy night, bringing with him the hint, the taste of something
entirely new, something unknown. But who is Fludd? An angel come to
shake the Fetherhoughtonians from their stupor, to reawaken Father
Angwin's faith, to show Philomena the nature of love? Or is he the devil
himself, a shadowy wanderer of the darkest places in the human heart?
Full of dry wit, compassionate characterisations and cutting insight,
Fludd is a brilliant gem of a book, and one of Hilary Mantel's most
original works. 'Fludd is a funny, exquisitely written story of
priests and nuns in fifties England, but it is also a questioning,
intellectual book that applies a profound thoughtfulness to various
abtruse areas of religious (or supernatural) belief … A faultless comic
masterpiece.' Literary Review
'Good morality tales are unusual; but rarer still are books that
genuinely make you laugh out loud.' Spectator
'Hilary Mantel brings together the miraculous and mundane, the dreadful
and the ridiculous in a novel of imagination and skill.' Financial Times
'In Fludd, Mantel draws on her own imagination, inventing a dark
universe which works to laws of her own making. The effect is dazzling,
and establishes her in the front ranks of novelists writing in English
today.' Guardian
'An excellent and ambitious novel.' Sunday Times Hilary Mantel is the
author of thirteen books , including A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, BEYOND
BLACK, and the memoir GIVING UP THE GHOST. Her two most recent novels,
WOLF HALL and its sequel BRING UP THE BODIES, have both been awarded The
Man Booker Prize - an unprecedented achievement.
