What do you think?
Rate this book
Fludd
This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780007172894.
One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he?
In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom.
No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop.
Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears.
Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action.
Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.
One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he?
In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom.
No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop.
Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears.
Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action.
Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit.
186 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
327 people are currently reading
12.4k people want to read
About the author
Hilary Mantel
110books7,597followersHilary Mantel was the bestselling author of many novels including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Wolf Hall Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She also wrote A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, Vacant Possession, and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 504 reviews
September 16, 2019
One of Hilary Mantel’s early novels; this is quite an oddity and if you have a working knowledge of the Catholic Church, very funny. It is set in northern England in the mid 1950s in a mill town on the edge of a bleak moor. The Catholicism is pre Vatican 2 and very Latin; heavily laced with superstition.
The novel revolves around the parish priest Father Angwin who long ago lost his faith and believes only in the devil and tradition. He is plagued by the Bishop who is modern and trying to bring the Church into the twentieth century. There is also a convent with nuns who teach in the local school. The characterisation is strong and even the minor players are well drawn with substance, and it is the very human frailty of the characters that make them likeable. The nuns are making a tapestry of the ten plagues of Egypt; “Now we are up to boils�.
This is a very competent dissection of superstition, but it is done with warmth and without cruelty; and there are some great quotes:
“The Protestants were damned, of course, by reason of this culpable ignorance. They would roast in hell. A span of seventy years, to ride bicycles in the steep streets, to get married, to eat bread and dripping: then bronchitis, pneumonia, a broken hip: then the minister calls, and the florist does a wreath: then devils will tear their flesh with pincers. It is a most neighbourly thought.�
The centre of the story is Fludd, the new curate of the parish; he is an enigma and his effect on those around him; take for instance the priest’s housekeeper Miss Dempsey:
''Deep within her, behind her cardigan and her blouse and her petticoat trimmed with scratchy nylon lace, behind her interlock vest and freckled skin, Miss Dempsey sensed a slow movement, a tiny spiral shift of matter, as if, at the very moment the curate spoke, a change had occurred: a change so minute as to baffle description, but rippling out, in its effect, to infinity.''
He has a similar effect on a young Irish nun, Sister Philomena, who has had to leave Ireland for pretending her dermatitis was stigmata. The real question is who is Fludd? Is he an angel, or is he, more pertinently, the devil. He certainly is not a priest! The combination of humour and symbolism is a delight; it does help if you have some basic knowledge of the Catholic Church, but the questions are eternal ones. Sadistic nuns, an atheist priest, the saga of the buried statues (and their resurrection), devout (but ignorant) parishioners, a tobacconist who may also be the devil and the inscrutable Fludd. There is a great deal going on and it is fun and life affirming and about finding oneself.
The novel revolves around the parish priest Father Angwin who long ago lost his faith and believes only in the devil and tradition. He is plagued by the Bishop who is modern and trying to bring the Church into the twentieth century. There is also a convent with nuns who teach in the local school. The characterisation is strong and even the minor players are well drawn with substance, and it is the very human frailty of the characters that make them likeable. The nuns are making a tapestry of the ten plagues of Egypt; “Now we are up to boils�.
This is a very competent dissection of superstition, but it is done with warmth and without cruelty; and there are some great quotes:
“The Protestants were damned, of course, by reason of this culpable ignorance. They would roast in hell. A span of seventy years, to ride bicycles in the steep streets, to get married, to eat bread and dripping: then bronchitis, pneumonia, a broken hip: then the minister calls, and the florist does a wreath: then devils will tear their flesh with pincers. It is a most neighbourly thought.�
The centre of the story is Fludd, the new curate of the parish; he is an enigma and his effect on those around him; take for instance the priest’s housekeeper Miss Dempsey:
''Deep within her, behind her cardigan and her blouse and her petticoat trimmed with scratchy nylon lace, behind her interlock vest and freckled skin, Miss Dempsey sensed a slow movement, a tiny spiral shift of matter, as if, at the very moment the curate spoke, a change had occurred: a change so minute as to baffle description, but rippling out, in its effect, to infinity.''
He has a similar effect on a young Irish nun, Sister Philomena, who has had to leave Ireland for pretending her dermatitis was stigmata. The real question is who is Fludd? Is he an angel, or is he, more pertinently, the devil. He certainly is not a priest! The combination of humour and symbolism is a delight; it does help if you have some basic knowledge of the Catholic Church, but the questions are eternal ones. Sadistic nuns, an atheist priest, the saga of the buried statues (and their resurrection), devout (but ignorant) parishioners, a tobacconist who may also be the devil and the inscrutable Fludd. There is a great deal going on and it is fun and life affirming and about finding oneself.
May 8, 2018
It has been a hot sunny holiday weekend here in the UK and this is the third book I have finished in the last three days. This one was another treat - a comic novel reminiscent of the best of Iris Murdoch.
The book is set in the 1950s in a fictitious Northern Catholic village which appears to be situated in upper Longdendale, as it lies near the railway between Dinting and the Woodhead tunnel, and it has a bus that comes from Glossop. So perhaps Hadfield, which will be familiar to fans of the League of Gentlemen, and I suppose one could make parallels as this novel gets quite surreal at times.
The central conceit is that Fludd, a reincarnated 16th century alchemist, appears in the parish purporting to be a curate and transforms the limited lives of the local priest (who has lost his faith and his respect for his modernising bishop) and a downtrodden Irish nun. Mantel clearly enjoyed satirising the excesses of the Roman church and other Northern cliches, and like Iris Murdoch she smuggles some deeper religious and philosophical into what is essentially a light hearted comic fantasy.
The book is set in the 1950s in a fictitious Northern Catholic village which appears to be situated in upper Longdendale, as it lies near the railway between Dinting and the Woodhead tunnel, and it has a bus that comes from Glossop. So perhaps Hadfield, which will be familiar to fans of the League of Gentlemen, and I suppose one could make parallels as this novel gets quite surreal at times.
The central conceit is that Fludd, a reincarnated 16th century alchemist, appears in the parish purporting to be a curate and transforms the limited lives of the local priest (who has lost his faith and his respect for his modernising bishop) and a downtrodden Irish nun. Mantel clearly enjoyed satirising the excesses of the Roman church and other Northern cliches, and like Iris Murdoch she smuggles some deeper religious and philosophical into what is essentially a light hearted comic fantasy.
February 8, 2018
I smiled when some characters received their comeuppance in this sweet little tale of a bishop and his modernizing push on a priest and his parishioners who don't want to be brought into the future, thank you very much. The language is a bit obtuse, weaving the story through hedgerows of density, so it was difficult to figure out what was going on, a hint about who Fludd really was on the flyleaf helped, although usually I hate spoilers.
April 7, 2021
I thought the Gregorian chants might be necessary to get me into this novel, but it was soon forgotten when I opened the book.
1956. Fetherhoughton, Britain. A dark, sinister, miserable little town, where nobody cared to plant food since it either got stolen or damaged by the Protestants, or it was not important in the cotton mill industry where most of the inhabitants spent their waking hours. Outsiders might have found a wild dignity and grandeur in the moor landscape, but the Fetherhoughtonians did not bother with it at all.
The differences between men and women were accepted just as much as the idiosyncrasies of the nuns who taught the intellectually-challenged children in a poverty stricken school.
Trouble started brewing when Bishop Aiden Raphael Croucher, Doctor of Divinity ordered the removal of the cement statues in the church. He was a modern man who: desired unity in the church, a departure from superstitions, and other divergence from the Holy Scriptures. Father Angwin, who lost his faith years ago, secretly went through the motions of prescribed religious doctrine and did not really care what the people believed in or not. He just kept it to himself. But to remove the statues and totally get rid of them, might be a too big and sudden change for the devoted believers. "Faith is dead," Father Angwin said. "Its time is up. And faith being dead, if we are not to become automatons we must hang on to our superstitions as hard as we can."
Between him and Mrs. Agnes Dempsey, his housekeeper, a decision was made to bury them in shallow graves behind the garage. So St. Apollonia, whose teeth was all pulled by the Romans, St. Gerome with his little lion, St. Agatha, carrying her breasts in a dish, St. Cecilia with her portable organ, St. Ambrose with his hive, and several others, were to be mass murdered. However, he preferred to call it a mere calculated measure.
His obstinance inspired the Bishop to send over a young priest, or curate, to assist in the modernization of the parish. And Fudd arrived. Unannounced one cold, rainy winter evening. He was the change that would upset everything for many.
Mother Perpetua(Old Ma Purpit as she was called by the school children), the head of the convent, the cruel headmistress of the school, immediately was on red alert. Father Angwin, during all these many years, thought of her as a stumpy woman, a cannibal, with a gab in her front teeth which she used to pull and suck through the last tender bits of her victims. She laughed like a horse. A hoarse flirtatious laugh. Her skin was spongy, nose fleshy, and her teeth tombstones. "New Blood", she gleefully said of the young Father Fludd, while taking a gay step. And besides, she always thought the church was overcrowded.
And so is set in motion a dark, Gothic kind of tragicomedy that kept me fascinated and entertained. It ended in a miracle, if you think it exists, or black magic if you will, okay then, a mystery if it makes you happy, while the Devil turned out to be ... whomever your want him ... or her... to be.
Where did love fit into all of this?
“Not a word, not a word of love, Perhaps, she thought, he does not love in the ordinary way. God loves us, after all, He manifests it in cancer, cholera, Siamese twins. Not all forms of love are comprehensible, and some forms of love destroy what they touch.�
And sometimes, believe it or not, it is shown in pockets full of money, it's just not called love, if you know what I mean. Mmm, perhaps if we add a dollop of the supernatural, it can work.
Oh what a wonderful read! 186 pages of enjoyment.
1956. Fetherhoughton, Britain. A dark, sinister, miserable little town, where nobody cared to plant food since it either got stolen or damaged by the Protestants, or it was not important in the cotton mill industry where most of the inhabitants spent their waking hours. Outsiders might have found a wild dignity and grandeur in the moor landscape, but the Fetherhoughtonians did not bother with it at all.
The differences between men and women were accepted just as much as the idiosyncrasies of the nuns who taught the intellectually-challenged children in a poverty stricken school.
Trouble started brewing when Bishop Aiden Raphael Croucher, Doctor of Divinity ordered the removal of the cement statues in the church. He was a modern man who: desired unity in the church, a departure from superstitions, and other divergence from the Holy Scriptures. Father Angwin, who lost his faith years ago, secretly went through the motions of prescribed religious doctrine and did not really care what the people believed in or not. He just kept it to himself. But to remove the statues and totally get rid of them, might be a too big and sudden change for the devoted believers. "Faith is dead," Father Angwin said. "Its time is up. And faith being dead, if we are not to become automatons we must hang on to our superstitions as hard as we can."
Between him and Mrs. Agnes Dempsey, his housekeeper, a decision was made to bury them in shallow graves behind the garage. So St. Apollonia, whose teeth was all pulled by the Romans, St. Gerome with his little lion, St. Agatha, carrying her breasts in a dish, St. Cecilia with her portable organ, St. Ambrose with his hive, and several others, were to be mass murdered. However, he preferred to call it a mere calculated measure.
His obstinance inspired the Bishop to send over a young priest, or curate, to assist in the modernization of the parish. And Fudd arrived. Unannounced one cold, rainy winter evening. He was the change that would upset everything for many.
Mother Perpetua(Old Ma Purpit as she was called by the school children), the head of the convent, the cruel headmistress of the school, immediately was on red alert. Father Angwin, during all these many years, thought of her as a stumpy woman, a cannibal, with a gab in her front teeth which she used to pull and suck through the last tender bits of her victims. She laughed like a horse. A hoarse flirtatious laugh. Her skin was spongy, nose fleshy, and her teeth tombstones. "New Blood", she gleefully said of the young Father Fludd, while taking a gay step. And besides, she always thought the church was overcrowded.
And so is set in motion a dark, Gothic kind of tragicomedy that kept me fascinated and entertained. It ended in a miracle, if you think it exists, or black magic if you will, okay then, a mystery if it makes you happy, while the Devil turned out to be ... whomever your want him ... or her... to be.
Where did love fit into all of this?
“Not a word, not a word of love, Perhaps, she thought, he does not love in the ordinary way. God loves us, after all, He manifests it in cancer, cholera, Siamese twins. Not all forms of love are comprehensible, and some forms of love destroy what they touch.�
And sometimes, believe it or not, it is shown in pockets full of money, it's just not called love, if you know what I mean. Mmm, perhaps if we add a dollop of the supernatural, it can work.
Oh what a wonderful read! 186 pages of enjoyment.
January 9, 2016
“Not a word, not a word of love, Perhaps, she thought, he does not love in the ordinary way. God loves us, after all, He manifests it in cancer, cholera, Siamese twins. Not all forms of love are comprehensible, and some forms of love destroy what they touch.�
- Hilary Mantel, Fludd
After devouring Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, I was ready for another Mantel. Fludd is a small, tight irreverant novel about God, belief, love, faith, innocence and knowledge. There were segments of this novel where the threads of the narrative disengaged so much I was almost ready to drop the whole novel, but then Mantel would use that loose line to wrap the prose of the next couple pages around my head and choke me.
The novel was filled with amazing characters: a parish priest who no longer believes in God, but still believes in the Devil; an eczema-stigmatitized nun attracted to her guardian angel (or devil?), a gang of bitchy, spiteful nuns, and the title character who might be an alchemist, an angel or a devil or all of the above. With Fludd, Mantel explores the silent and understated boundaries between faith and modernity, between innocence and knowledge, between good and evil.
While, for me, this didn't hit as hard as her last two novels, it was worth the read to see her early efforts at historical and literary inversion. Mantel is brilliant when she is crafting an uneasy story that flips your assumptions about history, morality, good and evil|live dan doog.
- Hilary Mantel, Fludd
After devouring Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, I was ready for another Mantel. Fludd is a small, tight irreverant novel about God, belief, love, faith, innocence and knowledge. There were segments of this novel where the threads of the narrative disengaged so much I was almost ready to drop the whole novel, but then Mantel would use that loose line to wrap the prose of the next couple pages around my head and choke me.
The novel was filled with amazing characters: a parish priest who no longer believes in God, but still believes in the Devil; an eczema-stigmatitized nun attracted to her guardian angel (or devil?), a gang of bitchy, spiteful nuns, and the title character who might be an alchemist, an angel or a devil or all of the above. With Fludd, Mantel explores the silent and understated boundaries between faith and modernity, between innocence and knowledge, between good and evil.
While, for me, this didn't hit as hard as her last two novels, it was worth the read to see her early efforts at historical and literary inversion. Mantel is brilliant when she is crafting an uneasy story that flips your assumptions about history, morality, good and evil|live dan doog.
December 20, 2022
Father Angwin is Catholic priest in a small northern English mill town. He is beset by Sister Perpetua, head of a small group of nuns tasked with keeping the poverty-stricken locals sufficiently educated to become cheap labor in the local mill. He is also beset by the local bishop who is intent on modernizing the church � remove most saints� statues of the church and get the youth swinging in such things as the latest 1950’s sock-hop. Father Angwin is not enthused by this, but decides to at least remove the statues, then hide them by burying them in the church cemetery. The bishop promises the reluctant Fr Angwin that he will send help to him in this church streamlining. Several nights later a priest knocks on the parish door and introduces himself as “Fludd.� Surely this is the promised but unwanted help?
The latest nun to arrive is Sister Philomena, fresh from being disgraced in Ireland, and trying her best to be a good nun. She was thought to showed signs of stigmata on her hands which thrilled her devout mum who wished to use her two daughters as portals into the good graces of the local priest and cut a few years out of her post-mortal purgatory stint. Despite her many attempts to be a good, faithful nun, Philomena is desperately unhappy. Surrounded by the Devil’s temptations at every step of her life, she knows she will never be a good nun, especially with Sister Perpetua, snitch to the bishop, as her overseer.
Once Fludd arrives, a few things change. Miracles occur. Father Angwin, no longer a believer and pretty tolerant of others� sins in the confessional, can get along with Fludd on that basis. Fludd, at least is happy to liberalize some aspects of village and rectory life, but the dark cloud of the bishop and Sister Perpetua lingers. The story plot is only revealed in the last half of the book and I will stop here to avoid spoilers.
Before reading “Fludd,� my only Mantel exposure was her controversial short story collection, “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.� Having had a bluntly physical confrontation with the slightly rusted Iron Lady (Lady??) I very much enjoyed reading Mantel’s story published well after Thatcher’s death. “Fludd� has a similar theme � liberation. Despite the above paragraphs, the book is a humorous and sarcastic denunciation of nonsense and humbuggery. Here, it is the self-imposed prison of SIN created by the Catholic Church. What is a sin? How do you know if you have committed a sin? How does a nun maintain Christian modesty when taking a bath? (Secret � she avoids being naked by covering up all her body’s fun bits with a shift before disrobing and is never, ever completely naked)
The theme of liberation is encapsulated in Sister Philomena. As an unhappy nun she eventually sees dropping the idea that every movement of her body, every thought she has carries with it the danger of sin. Second, she is Irish and her pre-convent name was Róisín O’Halloran. For years, uttering the word “Ireland� was outlawed by the English � it could not be used in either the English or the Irish language, so the Irish used euphemisms such as Róisín Dubh (Dark Rosaleen), or Róisín in some other combination. A free Philomena would return to be herself, Róisín O’Halloran.
So, why did Mantel write the book? She was born into an Irish Catholic family in an English town. At the time, Irish were given an even lower status than Scots. And Mantel attended Catholic schools; her experiences were negative. From the Hilary Mantel Wikipedia website:
”In a 2013 interview with The Telegraph, Mantel stated: "I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people. [...] When I was a child I wondered why priests and nuns were not nicer people. I thought that they were amongst the worst people I knew.�
“Fludd� may have been a revenge piece in retaliation for part of a miserable childhood education.
Also worth noting, “Fludd� won a number of prizes in 1990: the Southern Arts Literature Prize; the Cheltenham Prize� the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.
All-in-all, a brief and enigmatic book which explores the underside of traditional Christian beliefs and their effects on a wide swath of small-town English society.
The latest nun to arrive is Sister Philomena, fresh from being disgraced in Ireland, and trying her best to be a good nun. She was thought to showed signs of stigmata on her hands which thrilled her devout mum who wished to use her two daughters as portals into the good graces of the local priest and cut a few years out of her post-mortal purgatory stint. Despite her many attempts to be a good, faithful nun, Philomena is desperately unhappy. Surrounded by the Devil’s temptations at every step of her life, she knows she will never be a good nun, especially with Sister Perpetua, snitch to the bishop, as her overseer.
Once Fludd arrives, a few things change. Miracles occur. Father Angwin, no longer a believer and pretty tolerant of others� sins in the confessional, can get along with Fludd on that basis. Fludd, at least is happy to liberalize some aspects of village and rectory life, but the dark cloud of the bishop and Sister Perpetua lingers. The story plot is only revealed in the last half of the book and I will stop here to avoid spoilers.
Before reading “Fludd,� my only Mantel exposure was her controversial short story collection, “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.� Having had a bluntly physical confrontation with the slightly rusted Iron Lady (Lady??) I very much enjoyed reading Mantel’s story published well after Thatcher’s death. “Fludd� has a similar theme � liberation. Despite the above paragraphs, the book is a humorous and sarcastic denunciation of nonsense and humbuggery. Here, it is the self-imposed prison of SIN created by the Catholic Church. What is a sin? How do you know if you have committed a sin? How does a nun maintain Christian modesty when taking a bath? (Secret � she avoids being naked by covering up all her body’s fun bits with a shift before disrobing and is never, ever completely naked)
The theme of liberation is encapsulated in Sister Philomena. As an unhappy nun she eventually sees dropping the idea that every movement of her body, every thought she has carries with it the danger of sin. Second, she is Irish and her pre-convent name was Róisín O’Halloran. For years, uttering the word “Ireland� was outlawed by the English � it could not be used in either the English or the Irish language, so the Irish used euphemisms such as Róisín Dubh (Dark Rosaleen), or Róisín in some other combination. A free Philomena would return to be herself, Róisín O’Halloran.
So, why did Mantel write the book? She was born into an Irish Catholic family in an English town. At the time, Irish were given an even lower status than Scots. And Mantel attended Catholic schools; her experiences were negative. From the Hilary Mantel Wikipedia website:
”In a 2013 interview with The Telegraph, Mantel stated: "I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people. [...] When I was a child I wondered why priests and nuns were not nicer people. I thought that they were amongst the worst people I knew.�
“Fludd� may have been a revenge piece in retaliation for part of a miserable childhood education.
Also worth noting, “Fludd� won a number of prizes in 1990: the Southern Arts Literature Prize; the Cheltenham Prize� the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.
All-in-all, a brief and enigmatic book which explores the underside of traditional Christian beliefs and their effects on a wide swath of small-town English society.
September 19, 2021
Reasons to read Fludd:
1. The narrator is just fantastic. She (no gender is indicated, so in the spirit of misandry I'm assuming she's female) is straight-faced but very funny; she is wearily contemptuous of the villagers of Fetherhoughton, but also understands them so thoroughly that it's clear there's not as much distance between them as she might like. Consider this description:
In two paragraphs, Mantel has given us a complete sense of an entire community. And the pacing of the sentences! Perfection. Unlike many of her Literary fellows, Mantel never writes to show off. She doesn't have to.
2. The plot is delightful, which is rare in Mantel. Fetherhoughton may be bleak, and the majority of its inhabitants dreary, but after the arrival of the mysterious curate Fludd things begin to happen that are, in a restrained, credible way, magical.
3. The characters! Father Angwin, Miss Dempsey, Sister Philomena, Mother Perpetua--Mantel renders them beautifully. They are as real on the page as breathing.
IN CONCLUSION: everyone ought to read Fludd.
1. The narrator is just fantastic. She (no gender is indicated, so in the spirit of misandry I'm assuming she's female) is straight-faced but very funny; she is wearily contemptuous of the villagers of Fetherhoughton, but also understands them so thoroughly that it's clear there's not as much distance between them as she might like. Consider this description:
For shoes, the women wore bedroom slippers in the form of bootees, with a big zip up the middle. When they went outdoors they put on a stouter version of the same shoe in a tough dark brown suede. Their legs rose like tubes, only an inch or so exposed beneath the hems of their big winter coats.
The younger women had different bedroom slippers, which relatives gave each other every Christmas. They were dish-shaped, each with a thick ruff of pink or blue nylon fur. At first the soles of these slippers were as hard and shiny as glass; it took a week of wear before they bent and gave under the foot, and during that week their wearer would often look down on them with pride, with a guilty sense of luxury, as the nylon fur tickled her ankles. But gradually the fur lost its bounce and spring, and crumbs fell into it; by February its fibres were matted together with chip fat.
In two paragraphs, Mantel has given us a complete sense of an entire community. And the pacing of the sentences! Perfection. Unlike many of her Literary fellows, Mantel never writes to show off. She doesn't have to.
2. The plot is delightful, which is rare in Mantel. Fetherhoughton may be bleak, and the majority of its inhabitants dreary, but after the arrival of the mysterious curate Fludd things begin to happen that are, in a restrained, credible way, magical.
3. The characters! Father Angwin, Miss Dempsey, Sister Philomena, Mother Perpetua--Mantel renders them beautifully. They are as real on the page as breathing.
IN CONCLUSION: everyone ought to read Fludd.
March 15, 2022
Hilary Mantel is an great writer that definitely know how to write a story but unfortunately this one didn't stuck with me. Was having difficulty being focused on the audiobook. Maybe not the right time
November 29, 2020
Fetherhoughton is a village on the North of England moors, a grim little place in the 1950s, whose incurious inhabitants, mainly Irish immigrants or their descendants, work in local factories and have no interest in or care for the surrounding landscape or larger world. They are, moreover,
But there are certainly eccentrics among them, notably Father Angwin, pastor of St Thomas Aquinas church, where most villagers are parishioners. Usually inebriated, he believes he understands these people’s limitations and superstitions, and has judged ‘it dangerous to disabuse his flock of the notion that the Bible was a Protestant book.� But along comes the Bishop, a man of modernizing � ?Protestantizing � ideas, and orders the removal of most of the statues from the church. He doesn’t understand the primitive � or, let’s be frank, pagan � local beliefs and instincts, far more powerful than any rationalism. Nevertheless, the statues are duly buried. And then Father Fludd appears in the night. Who or what is he? A curate sent by the Bishop to spy on the pastor? A ghost? A devil? An angel? An occultist? An imposter?
Hilary Mantel mixes just enough realism and light into the madness to assure that this concoction of the gothic, the comic and the send-up of a certain type of Catholicism provides a good story, well told. She shows a particular gift for mixing sacred and profane in her similes: Father Angwin becomes mesmerized by the church sanctuary lamp ‘winking redly at him like an alcoholic uncle�. Or there’s this scene in a Manchester hotel:
What with, additionally, the monstrous Mother Perpetua, the dutiful spinster Agnes Dempsey, the ambiguous tobacconist Mr McEvoy, and the desperate young Sister Philomena (naïve but intelligent), Fludd gives pleasure on many levels and, despite its dark, damp corners and anterooms, ultimately cheers and refreshes.
very scathing and unforgiving about any aberration, deviation, eccentricity or piece of originality, [and] so thoroughly against pretension that [they] also discriminated against ambition, even against literacy.
But there are certainly eccentrics among them, notably Father Angwin, pastor of St Thomas Aquinas church, where most villagers are parishioners. Usually inebriated, he believes he understands these people’s limitations and superstitions, and has judged ‘it dangerous to disabuse his flock of the notion that the Bible was a Protestant book.� But along comes the Bishop, a man of modernizing � ?Protestantizing � ideas, and orders the removal of most of the statues from the church. He doesn’t understand the primitive � or, let’s be frank, pagan � local beliefs and instincts, far more powerful than any rationalism. Nevertheless, the statues are duly buried. And then Father Fludd appears in the night. Who or what is he? A curate sent by the Bishop to spy on the pastor? A ghost? A devil? An angel? An occultist? An imposter?
Hilary Mantel mixes just enough realism and light into the madness to assure that this concoction of the gothic, the comic and the send-up of a certain type of Catholicism provides a good story, well told. She shows a particular gift for mixing sacred and profane in her similes: Father Angwin becomes mesmerized by the church sanctuary lamp ‘winking redly at him like an alcoholic uncle�. Or there’s this scene in a Manchester hotel:
The foyer had a marmoreal chill. Behind a mahogany desk, curiously carved, proportioned like an altar, stood a sallow-faced personage, with the bloodless lips and sunken cheeks of a Vatican City intriguer; and he proffered them a great volume, like a chained Bible […] and then smiled a thin, wintry smile, like a martyr whose hangman has cracked a joke.
What with, additionally, the monstrous Mother Perpetua, the dutiful spinster Agnes Dempsey, the ambiguous tobacconist Mr McEvoy, and the desperate young Sister Philomena (naïve but intelligent), Fludd gives pleasure on many levels and, despite its dark, damp corners and anterooms, ultimately cheers and refreshes.
May 9, 2023
A little comic gem. Who is Fludd? Devil or Angel? Fludd suddenly appears in a small parish where the priest is an atheist and the nun in charge of the nunnery a sadist. Father Fludd goes about helping Sister Philomena and Father Angwin.
This process done with many funny moments. The whisky bottle never needing to be topped up. Agnes the eavesdropping housekeeper. The tobacconist who Father Angwin thinks is the devil. The rivalry between the two villages. Sister Anthony awful cooking. All of this makes this story set in the 50s a wonderful chuckling read. I especially liked the ending with everything tied up nicely.
This process done with many funny moments. The whisky bottle never needing to be topped up. Agnes the eavesdropping housekeeper. The tobacconist who Father Angwin thinks is the devil. The rivalry between the two villages. Sister Anthony awful cooking. All of this makes this story set in the 50s a wonderful chuckling read. I especially liked the ending with everything tied up nicely.
November 12, 2009
I liked the book and hope someday to read her Booker prize in paperback. But I think this was written for Believers of a particular stripe--those who object to the Church's cruelty and narrowness and yet who want to keep its belief in magic. The conceit is that Fludd is an alchemist of another era, but in this era, he's an alchemist of the human spirit. He helps transform several lives of those imprisoned in the demeaning, cruel thinking and practice of the Church. You naturally cheer for their success, even if you wish it had not been accomplished through magic (supernatural, Divine Intervention or however you interpret the events). Two other things need to be said. First, there is a lot of comedy, not all of it black, though it arises in the depressing, sub-human world of poverty of spirit and intellect. Second, the picture of the Church and its practices is telling, but intermixed with magic. I don't think magic works in realistic ficition. It detracts from the realism and makes you think of the writer, not the characters. Not necessarily a problem with comedy, which can flit in and out of black realism very well in the hands of a capable writer (like Mantel). So, I say this is for Believers who want a more human, more decent Church, but who don't want to give up on magic and the supernatural.
May 25, 2021
I can only characterise this as ‘Father Ted� meets ‘The Master and Margarita�. The lives of faithless alcoholic Father Angwin and his eccentric housekeeper Miss Dempsey are thrown into disarray when the mysterious Father Fludd takes up residence at their grim rectory in a grim Northern village. Spiritual anarchy and peculiar behaviour ensue. If you only associate Hilary Mantel with weighty historical chronicles, you should know that she also excels at dark tragi-comic tales of nuns on the run, time-travelling occultists, satanic tobacconists and human combustion, in a terrifyingly pithy Muriel Spark-esque style. Although fizzing with sharp wit and joyfully satirising the Catholic church, there is a tenderness towards the human need for rituals, symbols, myths and magic as well, some multi-layered thinky stuff, and a surprisingly happy ending, of sorts. Perfectly wonderful.
December 31, 2022
This was the third early novel by the author on which I embarked and this time it was a pleasant surprise. There was wry humour and satire, based upon a 1950s imaginary village at the edge of the moors somewhere near Yorkshire, and revolving around the Catholic Church. I must have turned over two pages at the start because I missed the note about Fludd, the original alchemist, until I'd finished the book - but I did understand the references to alchemy terms.
There's a nice ambiguity about who Fludd in the book actually is - angel, devil, or reincarnated 17th century alchemist (he does refer to a second birth at some point) but I wasn't troubled by that. The only thing that is a bit odd is the way he leaves a certain character at the end; it seems a bit callous. But other than that, I enjoyed the story, the fact that despite the 'grim' setting it was a lot more upbeat than the previous two books of hers I'd just read, and the characters and set-up were well realised and almost a pre-cursor to the Father Ted series, a favourite of mine, so I award this 4 stars.
There's a nice ambiguity about who Fludd in the book actually is - angel, devil, or reincarnated 17th century alchemist (he does refer to a second birth at some point) but I wasn't troubled by that. The only thing that is a bit odd is the way he leaves a certain character at the end; it seems a bit callous. But other than that, I enjoyed the story, the fact that despite the 'grim' setting it was a lot more upbeat than the previous two books of hers I'd just read, and the characters and set-up were well realised and almost a pre-cursor to the Father Ted series, a favourite of mine, so I award this 4 stars.
December 17, 2009
Mantel won the Booker Prize a few weeks ago for her new novel, which alas sounds totally unappetizing to me. However, I decided it really was about time I read some of her work -- and Fludd was the first book that came to hand.
In the mid-1950s in a ghastly English Midlands village called Fetherhoughton, whose shambling atavistic inhabitants regard themselves, probably wrongly, as at least superior to the denizens of neighbouring village Netherhoughton, there's trouble afoot in the Catholic church. The local bishop wants to impose "modernization" on crusty old Father Angwin and his flock. To this end he demands the statues of the saints and Virgin be removed from the church and insists he will inflict a new, young curate on the priest. Meanwhile, in the nearby convent comely young Sister Philomena is bridling against the dictatorial regime of Mother Purpiture. And then one day the new curate arrives, called Fludd, like the 17th-century alchemist . . .
The blurb, picking up on the Fludd connection, is full of hifalutin stuff to the effect that this is "a novel about alchemy and transformation", and maybe the intention was there. For me, though, the book read more like something the lovechild of Diana Wynne Jones and Tom Sharpe might produce, especially if assisted by the ghosts of Stella Gibbons and Mervyn Peake. The writing ranges from the entrancing ("Christ died to free us from the burden of our sin, but he never, so far as [Sister Philomena:] could see, lifted a finger to free us from our stupidity") to the Thog's Masterclass (". . . the very suggestion . . . was enough to make them close their minds and occupy their eyes with their shoelaces" -- ouch!). Although I'm not sure, then, that Fludd is great literature and worth all the plaudits it got from the posh press, I certainly enjoyed its bitchy humour and its mercilessly exaggerated characterization. A fun read.
January 5, 2023
I finally got around to reading Hilary Mantel after her death last year, and I chose not one of her recent historical novels, but instead this early black comedy. It starts out like a conventional Catholic-oriented light satire, with a priest and his housemaid, and some comical nuns, but the set-up soon gives way to a short novel that is not conventional at all, especially once Fludd himself appears. What a wonderful writer the young Mantel was, and what a dark mind! I found myself rooting for as little action as possible, because Mantel is best when her narration is free to do whatever she wants.
May 10, 2013
A short novel of the first rank, funny and grotesque and, for me, oddly tender even at its most acerbic. I didn't see its criticisms--implicit or explicit--directed at Catholicism, specifically, so much as provincialism, narrowness of spirit, and poverty of imagination. In their place, Mantel gives us a world utterly compelling in its banality, tragic in its absurdity, and yet redeemed in its capacity to sustain wonder.
October 26, 2023
Why did I wait so long to read this one? It's filled with wonderfully drawn characters- - and oh boy are they characters! -- and a sweet, tart, savory story. Mantel never ceases to amaze and delight me.
Second read, same reaction. This is one of her best.
Second read, same reaction. This is one of her best.
December 22, 2012
This book was published in 1989 long before Mantel became a household name (in households that pay attention to the winners of the Booker Prize), indeed when I first read it she was relatively unknown. It was the second book of hers that I read, the first being Beyond Black another magic realism novel. And as a result of reading both I went on to buy every book of hers I could find.
There have been a flurry of reviews on ŷ and Amazon recently by people who have read Wolf Hall and want to read more. Some were disappointed. This book is an altogether different beast to her prize-winning tomes - short (less than 200 pages), set in the 1950s and of course magic realism. I loved it the first time I read it, but found so much more to enjoy on second reading. I was perhaps more attuned to the way the magic in the book builds, knowing more now about the lost art of alchemy that underpins this book. As the opening note explains the real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical. The book may appear lightweight (literally and in terms of content), but that is deceiving. Look closer and reflect (as you are reading and afterwards), there is more here than meets the eye. The book (like some other magic realism novels) has been compared to a fairytale, which can be considered both a criticism or praise depending on your point of view. For me fairytales are about eternal patterns and truths. The theme of transformation is central to them, as it is in this book. Fludd transforms and redeems the people he comes in contact with.
The 1950's village setting is bleak, but Mantel brings a humour to the book, which is both wicked and humane. Open the book at nearly any page and you will find a gem of description:
The women liked to stand on their doorsteps. This standing was what they did. Recreational pursuits were for men : football, billiards, keeping hens. Treats were doled out to men, as a reward for good behaviour: cigarettes, beer at the Arundel Arms. Religion and the public library, were for children. Women only talked.
She is laughing, but she is not laughing at her characters. This is a book about happy endings.
As I have observed in reviews of magic realism books (and indeed of my own) some readers are frustrated by the lack of clear answers. Who or what is Fludd? Mantel plays with us - hinting that he might be the devil: He as a handy type with tongs, Father Angwin could tell or maybe the local tobacconist is as Father Angwin believes. What exactly did happen to Sister Perpetua as she pursued the fleeing nun? Maybe these readers should heed to the message of this book - there is more than one way of looking at the world.
This review was first published on and is part of my magic realism challenge in which I read and review 50 magic realism books in one year.
There have been a flurry of reviews on ŷ and Amazon recently by people who have read Wolf Hall and want to read more. Some were disappointed. This book is an altogether different beast to her prize-winning tomes - short (less than 200 pages), set in the 1950s and of course magic realism. I loved it the first time I read it, but found so much more to enjoy on second reading. I was perhaps more attuned to the way the magic in the book builds, knowing more now about the lost art of alchemy that underpins this book. As the opening note explains the real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical. The book may appear lightweight (literally and in terms of content), but that is deceiving. Look closer and reflect (as you are reading and afterwards), there is more here than meets the eye. The book (like some other magic realism novels) has been compared to a fairytale, which can be considered both a criticism or praise depending on your point of view. For me fairytales are about eternal patterns and truths. The theme of transformation is central to them, as it is in this book. Fludd transforms and redeems the people he comes in contact with.
The 1950's village setting is bleak, but Mantel brings a humour to the book, which is both wicked and humane. Open the book at nearly any page and you will find a gem of description:
The women liked to stand on their doorsteps. This standing was what they did. Recreational pursuits were for men : football, billiards, keeping hens. Treats were doled out to men, as a reward for good behaviour: cigarettes, beer at the Arundel Arms. Religion and the public library, were for children. Women only talked.
She is laughing, but she is not laughing at her characters. This is a book about happy endings.
As I have observed in reviews of magic realism books (and indeed of my own) some readers are frustrated by the lack of clear answers. Who or what is Fludd? Mantel plays with us - hinting that he might be the devil: He as a handy type with tongs, Father Angwin could tell or maybe the local tobacconist is as Father Angwin believes. What exactly did happen to Sister Perpetua as she pursued the fleeing nun? Maybe these readers should heed to the message of this book - there is more than one way of looking at the world.
This review was first published on and is part of my magic realism challenge in which I read and review 50 magic realism books in one year.
November 16, 2015
This was a Book Club book (not my pick) and while it was perfectly readable, I didn't really get it. Too much remains unexplained at the end of the book and there are too many loose ends. Was Fludd an angel or a devil? Or neither? I found the characters intensely annoying and the town they live in sounds petty and small-minded.
I dunno. Maybe I read too many books that have a nice, neatly packaged ending and a moral worthy of an after-school special, but this book left me wondering, 'Is that it?' Not usually a good sign.
I dunno. Maybe I read too many books that have a nice, neatly packaged ending and a moral worthy of an after-school special, but this book left me wondering, 'Is that it?' Not usually a good sign.
January 8, 2014
I picked this one up to help while away the time while Hilary Mantel completes the Cromwell trilogy. This is quite a tricky little book; writing this review helped me understand it better, and to like it more, so I'm going up a star.
I have a theory that this is primarily a story about compassion (as in "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people", Isa 40:1) - compassion on a grand scale, not merely for the individual characters specifically affected by Fludd's visit but also for the undifferentiated masses, every wretched man, woman and child inhabiting this depressed 1950's British mill town. Most of the things that other reviewers noted that don't quite seem to work in this story do kind of click into place once you read it that way, rather than reading it as a critique of all the provincial small-mindedness, superstition, the manifold failings of institutional Catholicism that are so plain to see on the surface of the book. The undercurrent of compassion saves the book from being mere caricature.
This is explicit in some places: early in the book, upon first meeting Miss Dempsey, Fludd, the ever-so-subtly supernatural agent, gives her a look that is "for all its chilling nature, a look of deep compassion." It's also implicit throughout. For example, the crusty, faithless old priest, Father Angwin, is moved, as I read it, primarily by compassion when he resists the bishop's order to get rid of the statues of saints that his ignorant parishioners find comfort in - pleading with the bishop to leave a statue alone because their ignorance about its true, gruesome meaning (look up St. Agatha, brrr) is "a harmless mistake. It is more decent than the truth. It is less cruel" - knowing full well that he's merely trying to make the best of a bad business ("Rubbish, Father said. These people aren't Christians. These people are heathens and Catholics.") So in the end the atheist priest cares more about the spiritual feeding of his flock than his chrome-plated bishop.
And is he quite atheist, really? Oh, he says he doesn't have the feeling of faith, but the way Father Angwin relates to Fludd the story of how he lost his faith is also telling. He continues to serve after losing his faith because "no matter how faithless or scandalous a man is, once he is a priest he is a priest for all eternity," because to do otherwise would be to "abscond" (i.e. dishonorable), and because his faith might grow back again if he goes through the motions long enough. That's a bit of a different take on the unbelieving priest than what you would expect; that's not hypocrisy, it's a sense of obligation, of a vocation - faithfulness without a feeling of faith? Feed my sheep?
In turn, if that is true, the ridiculous legalism of statues and fish fried in drippings also begins to look a little different, as does Fr Angwin's motivation for taking refuge in legalism upon losing his faith. Recall his musings about what kind of education would have benefited the bishop: one suited to a "pastoral economy." What if the rituals and superstitions are not sources of oppression but of security and comfort for these poor souls, precisely because they are so poor, so backward, so generally messed up (read: fallen)? On this reading, he doesn't make them so; he finds them so and does the best he can for them.
Many reviewers have struggled with the strange character of Fludd: is he angel or demon? The question seems unavoidable in this pre-Vatican II landscape, so much so that I wonder if the alchemy reference might not be a bit of a red herring. I am, in any case, ignorant of alchemy (and sadly not much enlightened by the Wikipedia article on his historical original, alchemist and occultist Robert Fludd) and therefore am sure I've missed some very literate inside jokes, but accepting the premise that his mission is to transform, transformation can still be for good or ill, kind or malicious. What, then, does he transform? The awful Mother Superior is disfigured with a wart and then spontaneously combusts while intending great cruelty. Father Angwin confesses his loss of faith, but only privately to Fludd, so remains unexposed and (again, that's my read) better equipped to stand up for his flock. Fludd is shown having thoughts - not self-evidently friendly thoughts - about the obnoxious bishop, and later Father Angwin suddenly has a defensive weapon handed to him in the guise of the bishop's embarrassing early book. I think a case can be made that these are the outworkings of compassion, which would tend to cast Fludd in more of an angelic than a demonic (or, at any rate, more sympathetic than malicious) light.
Yet it doesn't work in every case. The sad Miss Dempsey has a wart removed, lifting her spirits - but doesn't she also eavesdrop outside the confessional and intend to cause a scandal because "we need shaking up"? Hmm, not sure about this one. And it especially doesn't work with Philly/Roisin, the young nun, the least interesting subplot: I agree with those who noted that her "liberation" from the convent into Fludd's bed is trite in concept and drab in execution.
Then again, of course, Fludd's transformations are selective; he sweeps in and out, tinkering with a handful of people but leaving the masses in their unrelieved misery. If my theory is true, he leaves the main characters to minister to them, but still - it doesn't seem quite enough.
I'm also irked by the loose end in the form of the neighboring hamlet, Netherhoughton. There are lots of dark hints scattered throughout the book: the Netherhoughtonians are atheists, vandals, they are violent, they have "rituals" - but it's like Chekhov's gun that doesn't go off, we know no more about them at the end than we did in the beginning; must be another of those British inside jokes.
Yet the writing is gorgeous, luminous, symphonic, witty (the story Fr Angwin relates to Fludd of what he did on finding his faith gone is priceless) and it is the only quality that this novel shares with Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies; all masterfully written but nothing alike, not a whiff of the formulaic. My hat is off to Ms Mantel for that.yy
I have a theory that this is primarily a story about compassion (as in "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people", Isa 40:1) - compassion on a grand scale, not merely for the individual characters specifically affected by Fludd's visit but also for the undifferentiated masses, every wretched man, woman and child inhabiting this depressed 1950's British mill town. Most of the things that other reviewers noted that don't quite seem to work in this story do kind of click into place once you read it that way, rather than reading it as a critique of all the provincial small-mindedness, superstition, the manifold failings of institutional Catholicism that are so plain to see on the surface of the book. The undercurrent of compassion saves the book from being mere caricature.
This is explicit in some places: early in the book, upon first meeting Miss Dempsey, Fludd, the ever-so-subtly supernatural agent, gives her a look that is "for all its chilling nature, a look of deep compassion." It's also implicit throughout. For example, the crusty, faithless old priest, Father Angwin, is moved, as I read it, primarily by compassion when he resists the bishop's order to get rid of the statues of saints that his ignorant parishioners find comfort in - pleading with the bishop to leave a statue alone because their ignorance about its true, gruesome meaning (look up St. Agatha, brrr) is "a harmless mistake. It is more decent than the truth. It is less cruel" - knowing full well that he's merely trying to make the best of a bad business ("Rubbish, Father said. These people aren't Christians. These people are heathens and Catholics.") So in the end the atheist priest cares more about the spiritual feeding of his flock than his chrome-plated bishop.
And is he quite atheist, really? Oh, he says he doesn't have the feeling of faith, but the way Father Angwin relates to Fludd the story of how he lost his faith is also telling. He continues to serve after losing his faith because "no matter how faithless or scandalous a man is, once he is a priest he is a priest for all eternity," because to do otherwise would be to "abscond" (i.e. dishonorable), and because his faith might grow back again if he goes through the motions long enough. That's a bit of a different take on the unbelieving priest than what you would expect; that's not hypocrisy, it's a sense of obligation, of a vocation - faithfulness without a feeling of faith? Feed my sheep?
In turn, if that is true, the ridiculous legalism of statues and fish fried in drippings also begins to look a little different, as does Fr Angwin's motivation for taking refuge in legalism upon losing his faith. Recall his musings about what kind of education would have benefited the bishop: one suited to a "pastoral economy." What if the rituals and superstitions are not sources of oppression but of security and comfort for these poor souls, precisely because they are so poor, so backward, so generally messed up (read: fallen)? On this reading, he doesn't make them so; he finds them so and does the best he can for them.
Many reviewers have struggled with the strange character of Fludd: is he angel or demon? The question seems unavoidable in this pre-Vatican II landscape, so much so that I wonder if the alchemy reference might not be a bit of a red herring. I am, in any case, ignorant of alchemy (and sadly not much enlightened by the Wikipedia article on his historical original, alchemist and occultist Robert Fludd) and therefore am sure I've missed some very literate inside jokes, but accepting the premise that his mission is to transform, transformation can still be for good or ill, kind or malicious. What, then, does he transform? The awful Mother Superior is disfigured with a wart and then spontaneously combusts while intending great cruelty. Father Angwin confesses his loss of faith, but only privately to Fludd, so remains unexposed and (again, that's my read) better equipped to stand up for his flock. Fludd is shown having thoughts - not self-evidently friendly thoughts - about the obnoxious bishop, and later Father Angwin suddenly has a defensive weapon handed to him in the guise of the bishop's embarrassing early book. I think a case can be made that these are the outworkings of compassion, which would tend to cast Fludd in more of an angelic than a demonic (or, at any rate, more sympathetic than malicious) light.
Yet it doesn't work in every case. The sad Miss Dempsey has a wart removed, lifting her spirits - but doesn't she also eavesdrop outside the confessional and intend to cause a scandal because "we need shaking up"? Hmm, not sure about this one. And it especially doesn't work with Philly/Roisin, the young nun, the least interesting subplot: I agree with those who noted that her "liberation" from the convent into Fludd's bed is trite in concept and drab in execution.
Then again, of course, Fludd's transformations are selective; he sweeps in and out, tinkering with a handful of people but leaving the masses in their unrelieved misery. If my theory is true, he leaves the main characters to minister to them, but still - it doesn't seem quite enough.
I'm also irked by the loose end in the form of the neighboring hamlet, Netherhoughton. There are lots of dark hints scattered throughout the book: the Netherhoughtonians are atheists, vandals, they are violent, they have "rituals" - but it's like Chekhov's gun that doesn't go off, we know no more about them at the end than we did in the beginning; must be another of those British inside jokes.
Yet the writing is gorgeous, luminous, symphonic, witty (the story Fr Angwin relates to Fludd of what he did on finding his faith gone is priceless) and it is the only quality that this novel shares with Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies; all masterfully written but nothing alike, not a whiff of the formulaic. My hat is off to Ms Mantel for that.yy
June 13, 2018
I do enjoy Hilary Mantel's ferocious wit. I liked "Fludd" very much indeed, particularly because I read her memoir a while ago and could recognise her descriptions of life in a village in the bleak north of England in the 1950s. I loved the way she brought some of her experiences of growing up a Catholic there to give a feeling of authenticity to some very mysterious events when Fludd arrives and changes people's lives.
She has some laugh out loud moments and I particularly enjoyed her description of the Catholic church:
"The Church was in fact less than a hundred years old; it had been built when the Irish came to Fetherhoughton to work in the three cotton mills. But someone had briefed its architect to make it look as if it had always stood there. In those poor, troubled days it was an understandable wish, and the architect had a sense of history; it was a Shakespearian sense of history, with a grand contempt of the pitfalls of anachronism. Last Wednesday and the Battle of Bosworth are all one; the past is the past, and Mrs O'Toole, buried last Wednesday, is neck and neck with King Richard in the hurtle to eternity. This was - it must have been - the architect's view. From the Romans to the Hanoverians, it was all the same to him; they wore, no doubt, leather jerkins and iron crowns; they burned witches; their buildings were stone and quaint and cold, their windows were not as our windows; they slapped their thighs and said prithee. Only such a vision could have commanded into being the music-hall medievalism of St Thomas Aquinas."
A subversive delight.
She has some laugh out loud moments and I particularly enjoyed her description of the Catholic church:
"The Church was in fact less than a hundred years old; it had been built when the Irish came to Fetherhoughton to work in the three cotton mills. But someone had briefed its architect to make it look as if it had always stood there. In those poor, troubled days it was an understandable wish, and the architect had a sense of history; it was a Shakespearian sense of history, with a grand contempt of the pitfalls of anachronism. Last Wednesday and the Battle of Bosworth are all one; the past is the past, and Mrs O'Toole, buried last Wednesday, is neck and neck with King Richard in the hurtle to eternity. This was - it must have been - the architect's view. From the Romans to the Hanoverians, it was all the same to him; they wore, no doubt, leather jerkins and iron crowns; they burned witches; their buildings were stone and quaint and cold, their windows were not as our windows; they slapped their thighs and said prithee. Only such a vision could have commanded into being the music-hall medievalism of St Thomas Aquinas."
A subversive delight.
May 7, 2016
I'm reluctant to give just four stars to a winner of the Man Booker prize, but I found Fludd murky and not nearly as captivating as the allusion to its alchemist forebear led me to expect. This novel is all about a small Catholic parish in Northern England. The timeframe is indefinite (I think) but it feels like the 1950s. The first half of the book describes the mundane travails of Father Angwin and a mostly miserable and impoverished group of nuns. The father must contend with a garrulous bishop, who is under pressure to update traditional religious practice by converting to English-language liturgy and doing away with idolatrous statuary. The title character Fludd does not appear on the scene until halfway through the book. At this point, the reader won't know what the stakes are or why he's there or, indeed, where the characters want to go. Okay, it's a literary novel and maybe it doesn't require a genre plot? But I didn't have a hint of what it was all about. Father Angwin assumes Fludd is a priest sent by the bishop to help institute the new practices. Amazingly, his credentials are never in question. In truth, Fludd my be an errant priest, a con man, an emissary of Heaven or Hell, or even Satan himself. You won't know by book's end. He does achieve transformations in the lives of clergy, particularly one Sister Philomena, a sweet, gawkish girl who is so unhappy that she doesn't know how much of life she's missing. This book wanted to be more than it was. At least, that's what I think I wanted. If I missed the point, I welcome your comments.
July 3, 2024
To say that Hilary Mantel writes beautifully would be a statement of the obvious. She has enormous control over the language; in addition, she can delineate characters so effectively with a few strokes of her pen, that they stand before you as living, breathing entities. And to top it all, her subject matter is always unique, so that the reader is hooked and pulled into the tale before she knows it. (I have faced some problem with her thicker books: but those were more to do with my powers of persistence than the quality of her writing.)
In Fludd, she takes us to the fictitious village of Fetherhoughton, which is proudly Catholic and conservative. It is presided over by Father Angwin, an elderly alcoholic priest who has lost faith in God but believes that the devil exists (moreover, that he is physically present in the village). The convent and its attached school are ruled with an iron hand by Mother Perpetua (popularly known as Purpiture or simply, Purpit). There are a handful of protestants, as well as the sister village of Netherhoughton populated by atheists.
A few choice quotes:
The village:
Enter Fludd.
The curate is strange. He can penetrate the very souls of people (especially the fair sex), yet nobody can recall his features from memory. He eats and drinks without seeming to do so. His approach to religion is unorthodox, to say the least.
Soon, the influence of Fludd is felt everywhere. The padre's middle-aged housekeeper Agnes Dempsey and the young sister Philomena feel his magnetism. Mother Purpit is intimidated. Father Angwin is emboldened in his unorthodox views. The Fetherhoughtonian on the street becomes more pious, and even the atheists of Netherhoughton are affected.
Fludd, who talks in alchemical terms, effects his own alchemy on the sleepy village before leaving in the most unusual fashion.
I am not a Christian: but this novel compelled me to think deeply about Christianity and the "morality" it hoisted on its followers. The sense of being in perpetual sin, the need for redemption, and guilt about being human and having human emotions... these are highlighted, especially through the thoughts of Sister Philomena, who has the burden of being a nun in addition to being a Catholic. True, the church in Fetherhoughton does not bear much resemblance to the actual Roman Catholic Church of 1956 (when the events take place), but that creative exaggeration enables the writer to highlight some universal issues.
In one hundred and eighty-six pages, Hilary Mantel has managed to tell a thumping good story as well put a lot questions into the reader's mind. No mean feat!
PS: The author states at the beginning: "The real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical." (Emphasis mine).
That could be said of this novel, too.
In Fludd, she takes us to the fictitious village of Fetherhoughton, which is proudly Catholic and conservative. It is presided over by Father Angwin, an elderly alcoholic priest who has lost faith in God but believes that the devil exists (moreover, that he is physically present in the village). The convent and its attached school are ruled with an iron hand by Mother Perpetua (popularly known as Purpiture or simply, Purpit). There are a handful of protestants, as well as the sister village of Netherhoughton populated by atheists.
A few choice quotes:
The village:
The village lay in moorland, which ringed it on three sides. The surrounding hills, from the village streets, looked like the hunched and bristling back of a sleeping dog. Let sleeping dogs lie, was the attitude of the people; for they hated nature. They turned their faces in the fourth direction, to the road and the railway that led them to the black heart of the industrial north: to Manchester, to Wigan, to Liverpool. They were not townspeople; they had none of their curiosity. They were not country people; they could tell a cow from a sheep, but it was not their business. Cotton was their business, and had been for nearly a century. There were three mills, but there were no clogs and shawls; there was nothing picturesque.The language:
The speech of the Fetherhoughtonians is not easy to reproduce. The endeavour is false and futile. One misses the solemnity, the archaic formality of the Fetherhoughtonian dialect. It was a mode of speech, Father Angwin believed, that had come adrift from the language around it. Some current had caught them unawares, and washed the Fetherhoughtonians far from the navigable reaches of plain English; and there they drifted and bobbed on waters of their own, up the creek without a paddle.The women:
Consider the women of Fetherhoughton, as a stranger might see them; a stranger might have the opportunity, because while the men were shut away in the mills the women liked to stand on their doorsteps. This standing was what they did. Recreational pursuits were for men: football, billiards, keeping hens. Treats were doled out to men, as a reward for good behaviour: cigarettes, beer at the Arundel Arms. Religion, and the public library, were for children. Women only talked. They analysed motive, discussed the serious business, carried life forward. Between the schoolroom and their present state came the weaving sheds; deafened by the noise of the machines, they spoke too loudly now, their voices scattering through the gritty streets like the cries of displaced gulls.The Protestants:
The Protestants were damned, of course, by reason of this culpable ignorance. They would roast in hell. A span of seventy years, to ride bicycles in the steep streets, to get married, to eat bread and dripping: then bronchitis, pneumonia, a broken hip: then the minister calls, and the florist does a wreath: then devils will tear their flesh with pincers.The Bishop, a man of modern sensibilities, decides to reform Fetherhoughton and bring it out from the Middle Ages. As a beginning, he gets Father Angwin to get rid of most of the statuary from the church (the padre buries them!) and decides to appoint a curate to keep the old man in line.
Enter Fludd.
The curate is strange. He can penetrate the very souls of people (especially the fair sex), yet nobody can recall his features from memory. He eats and drinks without seeming to do so. His approach to religion is unorthodox, to say the least.
Soon, the influence of Fludd is felt everywhere. The padre's middle-aged housekeeper Agnes Dempsey and the young sister Philomena feel his magnetism. Mother Purpit is intimidated. Father Angwin is emboldened in his unorthodox views. The Fetherhoughtonian on the street becomes more pious, and even the atheists of Netherhoughton are affected.
Fludd, who talks in alchemical terms, effects his own alchemy on the sleepy village before leaving in the most unusual fashion.
I am not a Christian: but this novel compelled me to think deeply about Christianity and the "morality" it hoisted on its followers. The sense of being in perpetual sin, the need for redemption, and guilt about being human and having human emotions... these are highlighted, especially through the thoughts of Sister Philomena, who has the burden of being a nun in addition to being a Catholic. True, the church in Fetherhoughton does not bear much resemblance to the actual Roman Catholic Church of 1956 (when the events take place), but that creative exaggeration enables the writer to highlight some universal issues.
In one hundred and eighty-six pages, Hilary Mantel has managed to tell a thumping good story as well put a lot questions into the reader's mind. No mean feat!
PS: The author states at the beginning: "The real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical." (Emphasis mine).
That could be said of this novel, too.
November 21, 2019
DNF
I'm not sure if I qualify to comment here as I only made it through a couple of chapters.
Tedious in the extreme.
I'm sure that's relatively fair.
I'm not sure if I qualify to comment here as I only made it through a couple of chapters.
Tedious in the extreme.
I'm sure that's relatively fair.
October 18, 2014
Hilary Mantel writes with the light irony of Anita Brookner and the northern bathos of Alan Bennett:
“Or perhaps, she thought, it is some poor sinner with blood on his hands ridden over the wild moors to ask for absolution. But glancing at the clock she knew this could not be so for the last bus from Glossop had passed through twenty minutes earlier.�
�'No time for tea,' said the Bishop, 'I've come to talk to you on the subject of uniting all right-thinking people in the family of God.'�
Mantel rejects modern conventions and inserts a Victorian-style omniscient narrator into the proceedings, telling not showing, dipping into each of her characters' heads. She even reports that something horrible will happen on the nearby moors in the future (we are in 1956), outside of the purlieus of the book: she is playing God. The old-fashioned style suits the antediluvian setting of the town of Fetherhoughton (somewhere near Macclesfield), which sounds very familiar:
“They were not townspeople; they had none of their curiosity, they were not country people, [they] kept their eyes averted from the moors with a singular effort of will.�
There's a bit of the Father Teds about this (although the book was published in 1989, when Ted, Dougal, Jack and Mrs Doyle were a glint in Glinner's eye): the martyred housekeeper, he petty jealousies and rivalries, the rude, drunken, atheist priest, who nevertheless believes in the devil, who is, according to him, the local tobacconist.
The novel shows the dark side of the Catholic church, not the paedophile priests, or abused single mothers in laundries, or raped teenagers denied abortions, or the spread of AIDS in Africa, but the sheer futility of the idea of good and evil when every one, every thing is somewhere between these two states. In the mid-fifties, in a small, pious, uneducated town, this concept would have been revolutionary.
Like Mr Pye, another mysterious incomer arriving to disrupt things, the titular Fludd is part angel, part devil, a decent demon. What if Lucifer is a good guy, posits Mantel, and what If things were not binary? Fludd commits a sin in the eyes of the church by persuading a nun to go on the run with him and then abandoning her after “ruining� her, but also encouraging her into a life of love and liberty, to inspire her to taste food and freedom.
Finally, some of Mantel's lovely descriptions:
“Her face full of complaints.�
“The summer, a thick grey blanket, had pinned itself to the windows.�
“In recent years, her face had fallen softly, like a piece of light cotton folding into a box.�
“Or perhaps, she thought, it is some poor sinner with blood on his hands ridden over the wild moors to ask for absolution. But glancing at the clock she knew this could not be so for the last bus from Glossop had passed through twenty minutes earlier.�
�'No time for tea,' said the Bishop, 'I've come to talk to you on the subject of uniting all right-thinking people in the family of God.'�
Mantel rejects modern conventions and inserts a Victorian-style omniscient narrator into the proceedings, telling not showing, dipping into each of her characters' heads. She even reports that something horrible will happen on the nearby moors in the future (we are in 1956), outside of the purlieus of the book: she is playing God. The old-fashioned style suits the antediluvian setting of the town of Fetherhoughton (somewhere near Macclesfield), which sounds very familiar:
“They were not townspeople; they had none of their curiosity, they were not country people, [they] kept their eyes averted from the moors with a singular effort of will.�
There's a bit of the Father Teds about this (although the book was published in 1989, when Ted, Dougal, Jack and Mrs Doyle were a glint in Glinner's eye): the martyred housekeeper, he petty jealousies and rivalries, the rude, drunken, atheist priest, who nevertheless believes in the devil, who is, according to him, the local tobacconist.
The novel shows the dark side of the Catholic church, not the paedophile priests, or abused single mothers in laundries, or raped teenagers denied abortions, or the spread of AIDS in Africa, but the sheer futility of the idea of good and evil when every one, every thing is somewhere between these two states. In the mid-fifties, in a small, pious, uneducated town, this concept would have been revolutionary.
Like Mr Pye, another mysterious incomer arriving to disrupt things, the titular Fludd is part angel, part devil, a decent demon. What if Lucifer is a good guy, posits Mantel, and what If things were not binary? Fludd commits a sin in the eyes of the church by persuading a nun to go on the run with him and then abandoning her after “ruining� her, but also encouraging her into a life of love and liberty, to inspire her to taste food and freedom.
Finally, some of Mantel's lovely descriptions:
“Her face full of complaints.�
“The summer, a thick grey blanket, had pinned itself to the windows.�
“In recent years, her face had fallen softly, like a piece of light cotton folding into a box.�
November 27, 2015
I just couldn't get into it at all. Read the first few chapters, but I found the breezy writing and caricatured characters just annoying. I then went to the last few chapters, thinking that maybe things would develop and I'd be intrigued enough to finish this short book, but the last seemed exactly like the first: breezy and perhaps fable-like, but not enough for me to have a desire to finish reading it.
One reviewer on Amazon said that nothing happens until the very end, and even then it's confusing. That reviewer gave it five stars, saying the book would stay with you for a long time. I really don't need things "to happen" in a book that's got what I consider to be great writing, great style. But here, nothing but goofy stuff was happening and I didn't like the writing style. I LOVED *Wolf Hall* so I was predisposed to like anything by Hilary Mantel, but this book isn't up my alley. If I can say anything good about it, it's that Hilary Mantel obviously is a writer who doesn't just have one trick up her sleeve: this is SO different from Wolf Hall that I wouldn't have believed it was the same author.
One reviewer on Amazon said that nothing happens until the very end, and even then it's confusing. That reviewer gave it five stars, saying the book would stay with you for a long time. I really don't need things "to happen" in a book that's got what I consider to be great writing, great style. But here, nothing but goofy stuff was happening and I didn't like the writing style. I LOVED *Wolf Hall* so I was predisposed to like anything by Hilary Mantel, but this book isn't up my alley. If I can say anything good about it, it's that Hilary Mantel obviously is a writer who doesn't just have one trick up her sleeve: this is SO different from Wolf Hall that I wouldn't have believed it was the same author.
July 18, 2012
With Fludd, Mantel reveals a kinship with Muriel Spark - the ability to crawl under the skin of an isolated community (in this case an entwined collection of isolated communities) and investigate its innards with a sharp wit and an understanding heart. Here we have a Lancashire mill-town populated with Irish Catholic mill-workers who, according to their priest, would no more understand the Mass given in English than in Latin, locked in mutual misunderstanding and enmity with the heathens of the neighboring hamlet, a convent of miserable nuns condemned to daily sufferance of weak tea and soups made of vegetable peelings, and a rectory housing the priest who believes that the local tobacconist is the devil. It is 1956 and in walk the change makers: the Bishop who wants the priest to succumb to modernity and Father Fludd who brings with him an altogether different kind of alchemy.
The world and characters of Fludd are so vividly created that we cannot help but accept whatever happens here, no matter how miraculous or absurd.
The world and characters of Fludd are so vividly created that we cannot help but accept whatever happens here, no matter how miraculous or absurd.
April 10, 2010
I could not make head or tail of this book. Who Fludd was, why he appeared, why the shenanigans with the statues of the saints took place, and everything else between the covers was completely baffling to me. Was this a critique of Catholicism? Of parochialism? Of modernity? Of faith? No clue.
March 22, 2021
“Christ died to free us from the burden of our sin, but he never, so far as [Sister Philomena] could see, lifted a finger to free us from our stupidity.�
"And they say [money's] the root of all evil. Well, Protestants say that. Catholics know better.�
A humorous book by Ms.Mantel where she picks apart of the established Roman catholic church through a fictional English village.
Father Angwin is a priest who has lost his faith in God, but doing this for a livelihood. When the Bishop visits the village - he disturbs the equilibrium by ordering the priest to get rid of pagan statues. By a brainwave, Father Angwin with the help of the local nunnery and the people manages to bury the statues.
Enter a mysterious curate Fludd, who everybody assumes is there to keep an eye on Father Angwin after the Bishop's visit. Fludd has an aura of mystery about him - he doesn't seem to eat his food, but the food vanishes, noone seems to recall his face after meeting him.
In his time he influences two main characters - the young nun Sister Philomena who questions her calling and Father Angwin who has lost his faith. The conversations are funny and the allusion to the Devil is in the backdrop.
And yet, we find the characters happier by the end of the book (except for one character who bursts into flames). This is a very uncharacteristic book by Ms.Mantel. So much so that, I don't think she has a genre for herself.
Light read.
"And they say [money's] the root of all evil. Well, Protestants say that. Catholics know better.�
A humorous book by Ms.Mantel where she picks apart of the established Roman catholic church through a fictional English village.
Father Angwin is a priest who has lost his faith in God, but doing this for a livelihood. When the Bishop visits the village - he disturbs the equilibrium by ordering the priest to get rid of pagan statues. By a brainwave, Father Angwin with the help of the local nunnery and the people manages to bury the statues.
Enter a mysterious curate Fludd, who everybody assumes is there to keep an eye on Father Angwin after the Bishop's visit. Fludd has an aura of mystery about him - he doesn't seem to eat his food, but the food vanishes, noone seems to recall his face after meeting him.
In his time he influences two main characters - the young nun Sister Philomena who questions her calling and Father Angwin who has lost his faith. The conversations are funny and the allusion to the Devil is in the backdrop.
And yet, we find the characters happier by the end of the book (except for one character who bursts into flames). This is a very uncharacteristic book by Ms.Mantel. So much so that, I don't think she has a genre for herself.
Light read.
April 9, 2024
A few chuckles.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 504 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.