Chilling, though it is set in the blazing heat of Saudi Arabia. The open ending left me hanging in the air, but that's fine. At the middle of the book I was, for some reason, convinced that I knew what was being hidden in the empty flat, but o/c that was a mistake.
The narrator and the protagonist clearly hate the Saudi society, and while I was wondering if this was politically correct to write at some time, it is backed up by masses of facts and experienced and doesn't leave a doubt that it is a country I will visit under no circumstances. Mantel herself has lived in Jeddah, where the novel takes place, and once named the day she left it the happiest day of her life.

She’s OOOOK - beautiful in places but can’t escape that the plot is someone being bored and going crazy - the pay off of the crazy wasn’t enough for Frances the character or me as the reader to deal w the boredom UNFORCH.

Also .. I did wonder on some pages if it was a bit of a Michel Houellebecq style just because u are intellecuatal doesn’t mean you aren’t still being racist - some interesting convos between Frances (white western woman HATING living in 1980s saudia Arabia) and her female neighbours all locked in the gaff going mental together - but Frances babes u r liiiterallty a colonial wife - she has this whole underexplored past of having lived in Africa for 10+ years.

Appaz based on Hilary mantels real life experiences of Saudi in the 70s and 80s which is wild. And tbf she does odious characters well. But still is a generous 3 from me

Very weird

A genuinely interesting novel that explores life for a western women, living amongst a disparate, unhappy community of expatriates in Saudi Arabia in the late-1980s. It paints the portrait well, and captures the alternating boredom and fear of life in what seems to be an extraordinarily dysfunctional society.

Worth reading.

This is such a weird book...I don't know what to think about this, almost a month after I finished it. I had adored the other Hilary Mantel books that I read, so I wanted to try her earlier stuff. This was written 25 years ago, so its really early. And it's well written, I guess. But its SUCH an uncomfortable read. Basically, the idea is that a British woman follows her husband to Saudi Arabia for a contracting job he gets, and then slowly goes crazy stuck in the apartment alone. Its set up to be this psychological thriller where Arab culture/Islam stands in for the "other" and the "alien." The main character becomes sort of obsessed with what she perceives as the misogyny and general backwardness/ilogicalness of SA society and it all ends up feeling super politically incorrect to the reader in 2012. At the same time, Mantel has never shied away from creating unsympathetic or nasty main characters, so maybe she meant for the reader to come away thinking that the main character was pretty racist? Finally, the western world and its relationship to the Arab world, and specifically Saudi Arabia was not remotely the same in 1987 as it is 2012, so is it even fair to really judge the book with a 2012 perspective? I don't know...
I guess whatever else, this book got me thinking...

I had never read any of Hilary Mantel's novels to date but was fascinated by the recent dramatisation of Wolf Hall by the Beeb. This was chosen as our book of the month for wine club, sorry I mean book club, partly because of the recent BBC Radio 4 book at bedtime serialisation.

From the beginning you're given a sense of foreboding arising from the memo that sets the future scene in the novel and the "memo" predetermines the readers expected outcome. The plot and the storyline are excellent and woven in to the fabric of the novel is the uncertain reality that exists when living in the middle east. It's the original home of fake news, and one never knows who to believe or indeed trust. Speaking as an former expat myself I could certainly relate several of the events and situations to my own life living in the region. What this novel highlighted for me was the inflexibility of the protagonist and, this for me made her slightly unlikeable. Still however the novel gets 5 stars from me, the best choice we've had for a while and I'll certainly be passing my copy on.

Mantel’s third novel I have found out, and published over thirty years ago, proves that she could always write, but this novel, for all its prowess, was, for me, difficult. You can see that she is trying to build an almost creepy sense of mounting dread, with her protagonist, Frances, feeling increasingly isolated and trapped in a culture that is institutionally misogynistic, and there is too a mystery to be solved, but none of these devices were, for me, enough to elevate to especial enjoyment what is a fundamentally slow story whose central characters are difficult to like and whose motivations I could not relate to. I’ve always struggled with the idea that an aspiritual existence is a good trade for money. It’s not, and at times I could only feel that these characters have only themselves to blame. Frances’ naivety was also rather irritating. Yes the Saudi regime is corrupt, indeed the entire population is corrupt, but it is what it is, no sense constantly haranguing the mores of a corrupt society: it’s corrupt after all.

This sat in an interesting juxtaposition to A Passage to India which I read recently. The manner in which British attitudes to foreign cultures has “evolved” in a century is fascinating. Not much progress made unfortunately.

This was central in fact. The British expats tried very hard to feel superior to their hosts, but were themselves corrupted by avarice. There’s only one reason that the British go to live in Saudi Arabia after all, and it’s not enlightenment they’re chasing. 6/10