Product Description
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. Thirty years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and thirty years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 11 reviews)

Lyrical and heartfelt by Max T

4 Stars
August 14, 2009
Hilary Mantel is a brilliant writer. She gets so deep into the lives of her characters and makes an ordinary life seem fascinating and full of mystery. As with 8 months on Ghazza Street there is quite a lot of suspense in this book that builds up nicely as the family secrets are slowly revealed. The ending is sad but very true.

Great British Author by mojavejoe (Mentone Beach)

5 Stars
August 09, 2005
I didn't discover Hilary Mantel until two weeks ago when I read a July 2005 New Yorker magazine (I don't remember the week). All I can say is that I thought I was well read, but now I wonder. No, I AM well read! So how have I missed this great author? And why, I demand to know, hasn't she won a Booker Prize? Anyway, in the two weeks since my discovery, I have read "A Change of Climate" and "Fludd". I now have before me "A Place of Greater Safety" which I hungrily look forward to. In fact, I plan to read all of her books. I even considered becoming one of those nuts who dedicates a web page to his or her favorite author. I won't, however, but not because Mantel is unworthy of such adulation, but because, well, I am not a nut. Finally, please allow me do the reader of "A Change of Climate" a great favor: do not read the back cover, as it tells way too much of the story. Instead, trust Mantel to tell you the story. You won't be disappointed. Great writing and great story.

Family secrets by Luan Gaines (Dana Point, CA USA)

4 Stars
November 21, 2004
Instinctively, people know that when a pain is too great to be endured, it is appropriate to wait until it can be more rationally confronted. But there is always the danger of pushing the pain so far away that it becomes inaccessible, if never, ever forgotten. "To some people great grief is an indecency...They blame the bereaved." After a stunning tragedy in Africa, where Ralph and Anna Eldred have gone as missionaries, they return home, cautioning their family never to speak of the horror they have endured. It is relegated to the past, where it will stay. The Eldred's are compliant people, particularly Ralph, a man of good intentions who works for the family charitable trust, providing necessities, such as food, clothing and shelter for those less fortunate. But for their brief years in Africa and the trauma they suffer on the Dark Continent, the Eldred's personify the spirit of missionary life. Once again residing in England providing for the downtrodden, Anna and Ralph live out a self-effacing routine. As a Christian, Ralph believes in service, so compassionate that he cannot turn away from those in need. Covertly, Ralph is concerned that people will mistake him for a man who loves mankind in general, but not persons in particular. However, this is exactly how he is perceived, soldiering on for over twenty years after the tragedy, burying himself in the trivia of everyday obligations. His endless pursuit of virtue in hopes of atonement can never be realized. Meanwhile, Anna suffers grievously for Ralph's neglect, enduring a constant ache, her own survival defined by the ever-present needs of her four children. Anna has paid a terrible price for her silence all these years. Ralph grows more distant and preoccupied, Anna more edgy and neither expects the emotional eruption when Ralph falls into a romantic entanglement with a local woman. Mantel is gifted writer, dissecting her character's motivations with elegant precision, especially their great missionary hubris, the vagrant self-congratulatory thoughts that creep into even the most well-meant acts, as the couple seeks to bury the past under the weight of the present. Layer upon layer, the author builds a structure that appears sturdy but ultimately collapses under the weight of grief and silence. Whether the couple recovers will be determined by their spiritual strengths and human weaknesses, the delicate balance between expectations and reality. Luan Gaines/2004.

We Know These People by disheveledprofessor (the home of the Blue Angels)

4 Stars
March 31, 2003
This is the first novel of Hilary Mantel that I've read, and I'm eager to read more. Her style is her strength: she is a keen observer of human character, human fraility, human environments, and she describes the environment, emotions and atmospheres with a crystal clarity. For example, her paragraph about the end of a semester caused me to relive those times: "only dogged by that usual feeling of anticlimax the end of exams brings. After this, you think, after my papers are over, I will do, and I will do ... and then you don't. You are a shell, enclosing outworn effort. You expect a sense of freedom, and yet you feel trapped in the same old body, the same drab routines; you expect exhilaration, and you only feel a kind of habitual dullness, a letdown, a perverse longing for the days when you read and made notes and sat up all night."Mantel's characters are muddlers. They muddle through life with good intentions, but feel displaced and unsatisfied. Yet you care for them, and say to yourself, "I know these people!" There are many robust characters [Ralph and Anna, missionaries in Africa; their children, searching for their place in the world; Ralph's sister Emma] and threads interwoven through the basic story. The main characters are Ralph and Anna, missionaries who go to Africa to "do good". Evil events there haunt their lives when they return to England.The novel is written as an "entertaining read", in a page-turning style -- you are interested in the characters and events. Yet it is a substantial work, addressing important themes: good versus evil, do our choices make a difference, the cost of cultural misunderrstandings, the loss of faith, how any sense of security is an illusion. While entertaining, Mantel is not afraid of the artist's obligation to tell us unpalatable truths about ourselves.My one complaint is that the ending was too predictable; I felt that the novel was "wrapped up", rather than allowed to find its own ending.

British Sensibilities

2 Stars
July 09, 2001
Save your money. Or, if you need to spend it, buy plain yogurt -- you will find the bland white stuff much more exciting than this novel. If you do buy this book, you will wade through pages and pages waiting for the story to get started and then you will not care about a single character you meet. In the course of the book, there are love affairs, savage beatings, and a kidnapping or two, and all these incidents unfold without an ounce of passion, desire, or emotion. Anna, the long suffering wife, is so strangled that she can't bring herself to demand a new washing machine. She and her obtuse husband never talk to each other or to their children. And we are supposed to care about the marriage of these two? Buy yogurt.

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