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Monday, 21 February 2011

Review: Ink in the Blood

Title: Ink in the Blood
Author: Hilary Mantel
Nationality: British
Year: 2010
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Rating: 6/10
Summary: Entertaining, but I expected more for my 99p

The outline

Mantel recounts the unpleasantness of her recent hospital stay.

Sample

When Virginia Woolf's doctors forbade her to write, she obeyed them. Which makes me ask, what kind of wuss was Woolf?

The verdict

Ink in the Blood is an engaging and thought-provoking account of a hospital stay which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Mantel vividly identifies the awkwardness and discomfort of a modern hospital, while touching on questions of the nature of being an author. However, it’s a story that quite literally falls short. It’s actually little more than a well-written newspaper article (at 287 ‘locations’ on my Kindle I estimate it’s only around 2,500-3,000 words). For 99p I would have expected it to be around three times longer.

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