A Change of Climate

A Change of Climate is a novel by English author Hilary Mantel, first published in 1994 by Viking Books. At the time The Observer described it as the best book she had written. It was published in the United States by Henry Holt in 1997 and was recognised by the New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of that year. The novel has also been identified as one of the best of the 1990s.
Plot introduction
A Change of Climate is set in Norfolk in 1980, and concerns Ralph and Anna Eldred, parents of four children, whose family life threatens to disintegrate in the course of one summer, when memories which they have repressed fiercely for twenty years resurface to disrupt the purposive and peaceful lives they have tried to lead since a catastrophic event overtook them early in their married life. The action of the novel moves back to the late 1950s, when they worked for a missionary society in a dangerous and crowded South African township, and then follows the couple to Bechuanaland, where in the loneliness of a remote mission station an unspeakable loss occurs. The novel is about the possibility or impossibility of forgiveness, the clash of ideals and brutality, and the need to acknowledge that lives are broken before they can begin to be mended.
Inspiration
Mantel states that the idea for the book came in two parts. In Botswana in 1977 she read law reports about medicine murders and the theft of children; later she heard of an 'apparently happily married couple who suddenly split up after doing all the hard work of bringing up a family'. Mantel brought these two parts of the story together to form the novel. She goes on to reveal that the novel was the most difficult she had ever written (as of 2010) as she struggled with its formal plot and structure.
Reception
complete review concluded that of the reviews it sampled "Most very impressed, but not quite a consensus. Good writing, and most thought she made her points very well".
Rebecca Radner in San Francisco Chronicle writing "While the suspense builds as we wait to find out what happened in Africa, the book offers an extremely complex inquiry into the nature of good and evil",
Francine Prose in the New York Times Review of Books with "Some readers may find themselves re-examining their own ideas about the artist's right or obligation to render politically uncomfortable truths. Others may elect not to consider any of this at all, and simply to enjoy Hilary Mantel's smart, astringent and marvelously upsetting fiction".
However Janet Barron in the New Statesman and Society said "Where the novel disappoints is in its predictability. Once the stories are set in motion, the conclusions seem inevitable, and are indeed signposted throughout... The powerful writing here has been undermined".
Publication history
1994, UK, Viking Pub date 31 Mar 1994, Hardback
1995, UK, Penguin Pub date 2 Mar 1995, Paperback
1995, UK, Ulverscroft Pub date 1 Aug 1995, Large print
1997, US, Owl Books Pub date Jul 1997, Paperback
2003, US, Picador Pub date Sep 2003, Paperback
2005, UK, Fourth Estate Pub date 4 Mar 2010, Paperback
2010, US, Harper Perennial Paperback
2011, UK, Whole Story Audiobooks Pub date 1 Sep 2011, Audio CD (read by Sandra Duncan)
References
External links
A Change of Climate at complete review
Chapter One online
Evil weathered under African skies review from The Independent
1994 British novels
English novels
Family saga novels
Novels by Hilary Mantel
Novels set in South Africa
Novels set in Botswana
Fiction set in 1980
Novels set in Norfolk
Viking Press books