In postwar rural England, Hilary Mantel grew up convinced that the most improbable of accomplishments, including chivalry, horsemanship, and swordplay, were within her grasp.
Once married, however, she acquired a persistent pain that led to destructive drugs and patronizing psychiatry, ending in an ineffective but irrevocable surgery.
There would be no children; in herself she found instead one novel, and then another.
