“But perhaps a ghost is not something dead, but something not yet born: not something hidden, but something that we hope is about to be seen.” These words from a 2007 essay by the late Hilary Mantel are, like the title of the piece, “Touching Hands with The Lost”, prophetically apt for this posthumous collection of her non-fiction.
Included are essays, reviews and lectures written over 30 years, from 1987 to 2018. Yet even her biggest fans – I count myself among them – will find material new to them. Many of the pieces are of their time, but read together they have a quality of timelessness and prescience. The overall effect is to make the reader feel that Mantel is with us still, communicating from beyond the grave – and that we may now be seeing something that has hitherto been hidden.
Content from our partners
