Vacant Possession, Hilary Mantel
Vacant Possession, Hilary Mantel
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Vacant Possession

Author: Hilary Mantel

Narrator: Sandra Duncan

Unabridged: 9 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/25/2014


Synopsis

Ten years have passed since Muriel Axon was locked away for society's protection, but psychiatric confinement has only increased her malice and ingenuity. At last free, she sets into motion an intricate plan to exact revenge on those who had her put away. Her former social worker, Isabel, and her old neighbors have moved on, but Muriel, with her talent for disguise, will infiltrate their homes and manipulate their lives, until all her enemies are brought together for a gruesome finale. Hilary Mantel's razor-sharp wit animates every page of this darkly comic tale of retribution.

About Hilary Mantel

English author, Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, was born in Glossop, Derbyshire in 1952. She attended St. Charles Roman Catholic primary school in the mill village of Hadfield. Her parents were actually Irish descent, but were born in England. Mantel's father divorced her mother and left when she was eleven years old. She never saw him again. Her mother did not marry, but spent her life with Jack Mantel, from whom Hilary took his name as her surname. Her schooling ended with a bachelor's degree in Jurisprudence in 1973. She then worked in social work in a geriatric hospital.

Her books include historical fiction, including a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell's rise to power under King Henry VIII. They were Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light (which was just released in the UK in March of 2020). She twice won the Booker Award.

In keeping with her unconventional life, Hilary married Gerald McEwen, a geologist in 1972, and they lived in exotic places such as Botswana and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. They were divorced after he gave up geology to be her business manager, but then remarried.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paula

It's Mantel,ergo it's brilliant.What else is there to say?......more

Goodreads review by Jay

A Jacobean changeling revenge play, a ghost haunted world, an institutionalized world where Brits are dehumanized and alienated all in the effort to 'care' for them in way that is deeply uncaring. Muriel Axon is the monstrously wonderful axle around which this story of the destruction of a family ro......more

Goodreads review by Pam

This is the follow up to Every Day is Mother's Day. It is more coherent than the first volume: the basic plot is that ten years have passed since the first story and Muriel, who in book 1 was a rarely-speaking strange character supposedly of limited intelligence, has 'educated' herself in how to pas......more

Goodreads review by Karen

Sometimes things are dark but funny. Sometimes they’re so dark they start to seem pointless. This one felt a bit pointless to me; it was a foregone conclusion after the first hundred pages that any possible outcome would inevitably turn out as badly as possible, every character would make the bleake......more