An Experiment in Love: A Novel

If you come to this novel after Wolf Hall, you may wonder if this is the same novelist. This novel seemed sparse and rather flat. It was only after reading through to the end that I think I understood the intent: to capture a moment in the history of women of the West when they were educated somewhat akin to but not as vigorously as men. Separate but not equal. And when that very education separated them from the world of their mothers. Unless they were "Sophys" for whom university had always been a holding pen before marriage, the rest were experimenting or if not, experiments for their peers who preferred to watch. This is London in the late sixties/early seventies but it might as well be New York or Paris or Toronto. For those of us who came of age during this turbulent time, I am certain there are scenes that ring true and astonish for their universality.

I enjoyed this book but probably because as an english child of the 1950's I could easily identify with the type of upbringing and early school life to which these two school children were subjected and then the difficulty of studying as adolescents in a major city a long way from their provincial roots. The penultimate chapter delivered the right sort of out of left field surprise but the epilogue left me thinking what a waste of talent.The individual characters were well drawn and I really like Mantel's writing style. Maybe I missed a sub-text but I think that the title "An experiment in Love" is ill-conceived and a tad misleading. "An experiment in life" might have been closer to the point. Oh yes, don't be put off by the 1st chapter. The book would work perfectly well if that bit hadn't made it to print. It gets a lot better as the story warms up.

1970. Three young women leave their Catholic high school to start their freshman year in London. As Margaret Atwood describes the scene in her NYT review of what she calls "a haunting book": "The playing field is England, with its bafflingly complex and minutely calibrated systems of class and status, of region and religion; the players are little girls, larger girls, young women and, looming huge over all, mothers. The weapons are clothing, schools, intelligence, friendships, insults, accents, trophy boyfriends, material possessions and food. The battle cry is ''Sauve qui peut!''" The only fair way of giving an idea of the quality of the writing would be to quote the entire book, but here is an example, at a point where a minor character comes back to the dorm after her abortion:"Her child must vanish into the blank badlands of never-was: very different, of course, from the glittering realm of might-have-been". Dark? Sure, but so much of fine literature is. Loved it!

We have been comprehending better the relationship between evil and resentment through the horrible shootings we have witnessed. This book takes us deeper, cleverly and inconclusively into a generation of struggling, contemporary women of the 60's and 70's, examining gender issues, while going into other broad questions, as are class, family, friendship, education, the evil/resentment connection and the mother/daughter complexities.

I enjoyed this book and how Mantel has captured the period, and the changing views. I think what disappointed me most was the ending. It was sudden and the issues so rapidly disposed of. I felt it had been cut possibly for reasons the author doesnt need to reveal, but to finish the task, she uses the dramatic conclusion to excuse not having to explain more how the changes might have evolved.

An interesting idea, and well executed. Mantel's use of language, particularly dialog, is very satisfying.

Well written story of a time and place. Story line can be dull. But expectations were very high coming from the same author as wolf hall

It's obviously the work of a fantastic author early in her career. It reads well and really is interesting given what we now know about Hilary Mantel's ability to develop characters such as Thomas Cromwell.

This is the story of Carmel, who grew up in the 'fifties and went to London University in the 'seventies. This is very much a girl of my own age and the many details of day-to-day items at school and home chimed with my own memories. Where I parted company was in the relationships of Carmel and her friends and the way they talked to one another, which was nothing I recognised at all. I couldn't understand Carmel, Karina or Julianne, and I couldn't quite believe in them. The narrator often sounded snobbish about other girls and quite obnoxious at times, as were her unpleasant friends from school. I never had or saw friendships where so little was known about one another, nor such a lack of curiosity about each other's private lives. Girls in my experience don't hold back in asking questions and insisting on answers, nor do they converse in sneering, vicious tones. The long description of buying new school uniforms in a shop was written as though the eleven-year-old observations were those of an adult.Ultimately the rather horrible ending was a let-down, and a bit of a cop-out, and all ends were left loose, begging for a sequel if you cared enough about the characters.The style of this book is much easier and more straightforward than that of the Cromwell trilogy, and is literate and clever. There is much to admire in the writing, but after a while I began to find some of it pretentious. Phrases like (a purse zip opening) "like God farting" added nothing to the narrative and I imagined the author thinking one up randomly on a bus, jotting it in a notebook and resolving to use it somewhere. I give it four stars as it is a decent, well-written read, but it is ultimately not satisfying for me.

This was the first book by Hilary Mantel I read, about two decades ago; it remains my favourite of all her novels and is perhaps her most approachable and accessible work. It follows the fortunes of three school friends during their early years at a northern Catholic school and their first year at a London university in 1970 - the narrator Carmel, the cool and urbane Julianne and the insular, malignant Karina.Although this book may lack the grand scope of the author's historical fiction, her prose is as wonderful as ever, with its dark humour and trademark gift for conjuring uniquely apt images - who could possibly forget her description of a purse zip being opened in a hushed shop as sounding "like God farting"? It's also perhaps the most accurate, insightful, painfully amusing portrait of childhood I have ever read; the hopes, the fears, the casual cruelties, the embarrassment at parents' foibles, the mixture of awe and contempt for teachers...many acclaimed authors falter when it comes to creating child characters, but Hilary Mantel does it brilliantly.For anyone curious about Mantel's work, I'd suggest this as a great place to start. I can clearly remember pressing this book upon all my friends after first reading it, and twenty years on I still recommend it unreservedly.

Hilary Mantel is a genius at capturing the details of an era, a life. The novel seamlessly moves between past and present evoking a different time and space. Sad but so very beautifully captured!

This was my first time reading An Experiment In Love.I thought An Experiment In Love was great. I loved Mantel’s novel. I thought An Experiment In Love perfectly captured the experiences of Carmel and her friends growing up in the 70’s. Carmel was a great, sympathetic character. I liked the fact Mantel doesn’t make a huge deal of her eating disorder and writes about it as if it’s just an aspect of Carmel’s personality. In a way it was, to Carmel anyway and I thought Mantel handled it really well. I liked the way Mantel brought the 70’s and Carmel’s life as a Catholic alive. Carmel, Karina and Julia’s friendship is very unhealthy and complicated. Mantel does a great job at bringing these three very different girls to vivid life and exploring the complexity of the bond between them. The ending of An Experiment In Love took me by surprise, pleasantly so. Mantel has become one of my favourite writers and An Experiment In Love reinforces my admiration.

How student life might have been for these three female london undergraduates from Lancashire. Plenty of exploration of the past to contrast with current times. The thoughts of the characters are scarcely credible, but rather the novelist's interpretation of their circumstances and relationships. Entertaining and enjoyable.