LONDON: Hilary Mantel, whose death was announced on Friday, communed with ghosts throughout her life: the ghosts from history that stalked her fiction, the ghosts of her Irish Catholic ancestors and the ghosts of her unborn children.
The British author’s accomplishments, however, were very real.
There were midnight queues outside bookshops for her last novel. The Mirror & the Light was tipped by many critics to make an unprecedented treble of Man Booker prizes but missed out. Mantel took the judges’ snub in good grace.
“I think a book is born into a cultural moment and any book is carried on the cultural tide, so we just have to acknowledge that,” she…
