SOURCE: “We Have Stood Apart Studiously,” in Spectator, March 4, 1995, pp. 36–7.

In the following review, Brookner explores Mantel's portrayal of women in An Experiment in Love.

The love mentioned in the title [of An Experiment in Love] is not of the sapphic kind, although the protagonists are three girls of roughly similar backgrounds who go to the same school and are later inmates—the word is apt—of a students’ hostel in London. The love, rather, is that disingenuous affection that in early days is almost indistinguishable from life at home, is taken for granted, unquestioned, accepted, even when a quite specific dislike is felt. Later attitudes harden, and then antagonism is acknowledged, and the evidence of faithlessness can no longer be ignored.

In this feminist age it is politically incorrect to hint at dissension among women, yet it exists. In her clever novel Hilary Mantel has avoided the...