If you would like to read what Hilary Mantel made of Robocop, then I have the book for you. But if you’re looking for a memoir, as you might expect given the title, then you are out of luck. This is a collection of essays, lectures and journalism (Mantel spent four years as the Spectator’s film critic, hence Robocop). To the extent that it is a memoir of Mantel, it is a memoir of her mind, how she thought and how she wrote.
Her death at the age of 70 last September still feels like a tragedy. Open the pages of this book and that feeling hardens into certainty. What a talent we lost. Her sentences leap off the page, her range is exceptional. Here she is in New York’s main train station: “The market at Grand Central displayed American plenitude: transparent caskets of juicy berries, plump with a dusky purple bloom; pyramids of sushi; sheets of aged steak, lolling in its blood.”
