In A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing, Hilary Mantel writes: “There is no failed writing, only work pending.” She’s referring to the 97 notebooks that she kept in a wooden box. Mantel promised: “There is nothing I won’t say, only what I haven’t said yet.”
These words were written in 2016, just after her epic novel of the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety, was published. After that, Mantel released the third and final book in her Wolf Hall trilogy, a series that earned her two Booker prizes.
But what Mantel hasn’t said “yet” is precisely the problem. The author suffered a stroke and died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2022. Reflecting on her death, her admirer and peer Margaret Atwood asked: “What might she have written next? I don’t know, but I will miss it.”
