In the wake of Hilary Mantel's captivating memoir, Giving up the Ghost, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Published to coincide with the dramatisation of them on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.
This sharp, funny collection of loosely autobiographical stories begins in the 1950s in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues'. For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.
In 'King Billy is a Gentleman', the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. 'Curved Is the Line of Beauty' is a story of friendship, faith and a near-disaster in a scrap yard. The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In 'Third Floor Rising', she watches, dazzled, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity.
With a deceptively light touch, Mantel locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.
"Learning to Talk displays a brilliantly economical way with language - saying most by saying least, but saying it with idiosyncratic style ... it is in sparkling writing such as this that the truth is told. Both her memoir and these stories are a maverick vision of growing up acute and disenchanted in the north in the mid-20th Century. Both are written with wry, dry wit and are occasionally hilarious." -Sunday Times