SOURCE: “The Searchers,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 14, 1997, p. 6.

In the following essay, Innes discusses the defining characteristics of Mantel's fiction.

Two-thirds of the way through A Change of Climate, James, the head of a hostel for “derelicts and drunks” in the East End of London, is shaken to his Christian core. He has just received a letter from his nephew Ralph, who is a missionary in Botswana. Something terrible has happened to Ralph and his wife, Anna, something unimaginably violent. And because James is wise, kind and an old hand at life's tragedies, he tries to compose, haltingly, a few words of encouragement in preparation for Ralph and Anna's return to England.

“There is nothing, there is nothing worse, there is nothing so burdensome … there is nothing so appallingly hard … as the business of being human. …” The inadequate words die in his throat as he...