EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET: Hilary Mantel

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on Ghazzah Street'' and ''A Change of Climate,'' two witty, disturbing and memorable novels by Hilary Mantel. Appearing in the wake of the critical acclaim for Mantel's most recent novel, ''An Frances does hate it. She hates the greed which brings the expats to endure the intolerable in return for generous salaries. (She and her husband Andrew are mustering a deposit for a house in the UK). She hates the vacuous lifestyle of endless shopping and nostalgic British ‘cultural’ activities. She has nothing to do, and apart from (illegal) boozy parties with the other expats and the shopping, she is confined to her flat because it’s not just the official decrees that restrict her, it’s also the constant sense of feeling unsafe because of unofficial ad hoc harassments: When you get here and everything’s so strange, you feel isolated and got at – that’s Phase One. But then you learn how to manage daily life, and for a while the place begins to seem normal, and you’ll even defend the way things are done here, you’ll start explaining to newcomers that it’s all right really – that’s Phase Two. You coast along, and then

The stoical Frances, not quite the naive protagonist who usually features in fictions of this type, gives little away; even her diary is uninteresting. Everything is withheld. This tightness of control is perhaps the novel's eeriest feature." - Anita Brookner, The Spectator Mantel paints the varied expat communities (and the ugly corporations that do business there) very well, her opprobrium doled out equally to natives and foreigners alike. The details were fixed up, at the President Hotel this time (there being, in Gaborone, a choice of two) over a tough T-bone steak and a glass of Lion lager. Andrew Shore shook hands with Eric Parsons, the Saudi man; Jeff Pollard, talking, conducted him

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First, the plot was very thin. Admittedly, Mantel often has sketchy, meandering plots, but this one was just didn't carry water. I'll sum it up for you: British woman moves to Saudi Arabia to join her husband and doesn't like it there. All the other window dressing - an upstairs apartment that is supposedly used for a love tryst, the various punishments meted out to adulterers, the main character's own feelings of isolation - really didn't amount to much, mostly because Mantel did so little to make these plot points interesting. The ending, if you can make it that far, was like pulling an invisible rabbit out of a hat. (If anybody out there can tell me what actually happened in the end, I'd appreciate an explanation.) Mantel writes with a jaunty, wry panache and a scientific precision that can capture a character or a mood and offer it up, impaled and squirming, like a bug on a pin." - Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review Frances closed her eyes again. Drifting, she caught bits of their conversation: jargon, catchphrases. At home, at her widowed mother's house in York, she had been reading books about her destination. Despite her skepticism, her better knowledge,

It had this drawing on the cover, a woman, you know." He gestured in the air, describing half circles. "Naked, just a line drawing. Chap said he hadn't noticed."She thought of that cheese, that people say French taxi drivers won't let in their cabs. "What, really not?" up the conversation. "Sure on that brandy?" the steward said; and moved away. The slightest encouragement, and he would have asked, "Do you remember that Helen Smith case?"

Like everything else in these accomplished novels, the question makes one think. 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 an aura of lurking menace, not to mention the tantalizing riddle of the strange sounds that emanate from the supposedly vacant apartment above the Shores' temporary quarters.

Some found it interesting to read about Saudi Arabia in the 1980’s. Some were able to compare it to what they had heard about people living ‘compound life’ in South Africa. Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is a tautly written tale of suspense that makes brilliant use of monotony and claustrophobia to heighten the heroine's growing sense of danger." - Merle Rubin, Wall Street Journal