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Tag: Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel: Speaking with the Dead

I’m finally, finally reading Wolf Hall (I know, I know…). It is excellent of course, and I’m looking forward to reading Hilary Mantel’s new collection of stories The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher just as soon as I’ve finished it (and Bring Up the Bodies). Mantel was recently profiled by Olivia Laing, author of A Trip to Echo Spring (one of my favourite books of the year), for the November issue of Elle magazine:

there’s an unmistakably eerie element to what Mantel does: a summoning of and speaking with the dead. Although she insists that she has “a very constrained imagination” and is happiest working within a scaffolding of fact, she is nonetheless adept at the act of mediumship that fiction requires. More than any other historical novelist I can think of, she also has a knack for conveying the slipperiness of time, the way it sloshes backward and forward, changing even as you watch. “History and memory is the theme,” she agrees, “how experience is transmuted into history, and how memory goes to work and works it over. It’s the impurity, the flawed nature of history, its transience—that’s really what fascinates me.”

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Midweek Miscellany, October 28th, 2009

(The always awesome) FaceOut Books talks to Argentinian designer Juan Pablo Cambariere.

In the interview Juan Pablo mentions Alejandro Ros, “probably the greatest contemporary Argentinean designer”.

Alejandro Ros’ website — like his book design — is lovely, but it’s all Flash so you’re just going have to take a look for yourself

The Creative Review‘s second extract from Penguin by Illustrators is the text of the presentation made by artist, engraver, illustrator and designer David Gentleman.

The first extract (mentioned here) was the text of a presentation given by Romek Marber.

It’s in the Retelling — Booker winner Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, on historical fiction in The Guardian:

A novelist doesn’t sit at the keyboard sucking her thumb, thinking “what next?” A novel arrives whether you want it or not. After months or years of silent travel by night, it squats like an illegal immigrant at Calais, glowering and plotting, thinking of a thousand ways to gain a foothold. It’s useless to try to keep it out. It’s smarter than you are. It’s upon you before you’ve seen its face, and has set up in business and bought a house.

And finally…

Some lovely identity design for the McNally Jackson in NYC by Christine Celic Strohl and Eric Janssen Strohl (via DesignWorkLife). Interesting enough Eric Janssen Strohl also designs books and beautiful colophons (and again, Eric’s site is Flash and so you’re going to have take look yourself)…

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