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An Experiment in Love

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An Experiment in Love

By: Hilary Mantel
Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
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About this listen

It is London, 1970. Carmel McBain, in her first term at university, has cut free of her childhood roots in the north. Among the gossiping, flirtatious girls of Tonbridge Hall, she begins her experiments in life and love. But the year turns. The mini-skirt falls out of style and an era of concealment begins. Carmel's world darkens, and tragedy waits in the wings.

©1995 Hilary Mantel (P)2011 W F Howes Ltd Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Urban
All stars
Most relevant
This book is remarkable and sweet.

Full of spirit, humanity and of life.

Definitely worth a listen.

Remarkable

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This early Mantel novel published in 1995 is set in 1970 when Carmel McBain, (like Mantel herself) was 18 and studying at London University living in Tunbridge College with a group of girls. It’s very much a period piece covering both Carmel’s Lancashire childhood (similar to Mantel’s own) with her over-ambitious mother with her rigid attitudes, tight morals about what is right and seemly and what is not, forever pushing Carmel to work harder and harder, win a place at the Catholic senior school and be the first woman prime minister. Next door to the McBains is lumpy, overweight Karina who is constantly Carmel’s unbidden shadow following her to the Convent school and then onto Tunbridge College – always manipulative, constantly eating. The childhood and Convent scenes woven in and out of the present day 1970 narrative are brilliant with the oppressive smallness of the social pressures and the abrasive colourful language with the accent reproduced so well by the narrator here.
The cultural contrasts are just part of what Carmel has to navigate in London: the ethereal-seeming intimidating Sophies with their polish, articulacy and cheques from Daddy whilst Carmel ekes out her Grant (students were paid in those days!) to the nearest sixpence. There’s also the tiny meals in hall and the pressures to succeed and feed from the academic opportunities – and ‘feeding’ is appropriate because as sly Karina gets larger with spaghetti cooked on the communal ring, Carmel slowly loses her hold on life and succumbs to anorexia in an attempt to keep control. And of course there’s sex and boyfriends all of whom are shadowy figures (but this is an intensely female story so they’re never made real), and the constant fear and reality of getting pregnant, the pill not yet readily available. The ending is dramatic, if not melodramatic, and Karina is unveiled as even more sinister than she had seemed.
It’s certainly not a flawless novel, but that past era is vividly recreated in detail and the extensive interior life of Carmel portrays the very real tensions, concerns and pressures of young women emerging into the adult world of that time . Well worth returning to after 27 years!

Remembrance of past time

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Beautifully written and very much as I remember the preoccupations of women of the period in their years at college. A startling ending which will take a while to absorb - what actually happened and why?

An evocation of my college days!

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well read by the narrator, using just the right accent, with an interwoven narrative of later life in the hall of residence at a University of London college.
The ending was perplexing and sudden, not entirely satisfactory for me. The story feels very autobiographical until this point, then veers off at a melodramatic tangent.

Great evocations of Northern childhood ..

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This was very evocative of a certain 1950s/ 60s childhood and early 70s university days. The minutiae were captured perfectly. However just as the cataclysmic event was occurring the story ended and a few paragraphs wrapped the book up in the far future without any proper epilogue. It made for a rather unbalanced read; chapters of tiny inconsequential details, then a huge and brief dramatic ending. It was as if the author had just had enough and was winding up quickly.

Without giving any spoilers I felt very short changed and disappointed too by the collusion of the central character. It was unbelievable that the authorities would not have forensically examined the events of that terrible night. Perhaps they did but we were never fully told what happened afterwards.

Evocative of its time

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