The Giant, O'Brien

Written by Hilary Mantel

Narrated by Patrick Moy

London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge. In her acclaimed novel, two-time Man Booker Prize winning author Hilary Mantel tells of the fated convergence of Ireland and England. As belief wrestles knowledge and science wrestles song, so The Giant, O'Brien calls to us from a fork in the road as a tale of time, and a timeless tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781470366766

Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel is the author of seventeen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, the memoir Giving Up the Ghost and the short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Her latest novel, The Mirror & the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, while Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were both awarded the Booker Prize.

Reviews for The Giant, O'Brien

[readfeed · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If I find a book about giants I will read it. Mantel's giant book is bloody and poetic, the perfect vehicle for her peculiar magic. O'Brien is a charismatic young Irish giant who goes to 18th century (?) London to make his fortune.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This historical novel is set in late 18th century Ireland and London. Charles O'Brien, a fictional character based on Charles Byrne, "The Irish Giant", is an unschooled but literate and sensitive young man, who entertains his companions and admirers with tales of Irish lore. The countryside is beset by extreme poverty, and O'Brien is distressed when he discovers that Mulroney's, a favorite pub that hosted storytellers and poets, has fallen into ruin. O'Brien, accompanied by an unscrupulous manager and several shady hangers-on, decides to travel to London, to seek fame and fortune, and to use his earnings to rebuild Mulroney's.John Hunter is a famous but impoverished London surgeon and anatomist, who dedicates his life to the advancement of medical knowledge, even going so far as to inoculate himself with the syphilis bacterium in order to document the pathophysiology of this disease. At that time it was illegal to obtain cadavers for medical dissection, except for executed murderers. As a result, Hunter is forced to rely on graverobbers to supply him with freshly interred bodies for his work. Hunter learns about O'Brien, who is displayed behind closed doors for anyone who will pay a fee. He becomes obsessed with the giant as a medical specimen and the future centerpiece of his anatomical collection, as O'Brien soon begins to grow again, an indication that he will not live long. This was a fascinating story about these two intersecting lives, living conditions for the poor in late 18th century London, and especially the life of an anatomist during that time. Mantel's writing allows the reader to become immersed in the setting, as you can easily envision the teeming and filthy capital. The characters are not as richly portrayed as those in Wolf Hall, but this was definitely an enjoyable and worthwhile read.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Long-listed for the Orange Prize in 1999, this is a moving, delightful and heart-breaking sort of story with a pig in it. In other words, very Irish. Based loosely on two historical figures, the giant Charles O'Brien/Charles Byrne and the anatomist/surgeon John Hunter, this is a compelling tale of living with your circumstances and being who you are. The giant, O'Brien, and a band of ne'er-do-well minders leave Ireland, where their prospects are virtually nil, to go to England where their prospects are merely dim. Exhibited as a freak of nature, Charles is really a deeply thoughtful, self-contained man, with a gift for irony and story-telling. He comes to the attention of John Hunter, who has an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and who realizes, as Charles does himself, that the giant is literally growing to his death. Hunter is not above grave-robbing, body snatching and making contracts with men condemned to the gallows in order to get the specimens he craves for his work. Hell, he isn't even above injecting himself with the pox so he can watch and document the progress of the disease. (Street people are so unreliable.) Charles, however, balks at selling himself to be dismantled after death, fearing he will not be able to rise to heaven if his bones be scattered. 4 stars and a hanky.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mantel has discovered quite an unusual pair in Charles O'Brien, an Irish giant exhibited as a freak in 17th-century London, and John Hunter, the anatomist determined to secure O'Brien's body for his studies. (They are loosely based on real people.) She creates a fascinating but brutal picture of a slice of the underworld, a world where it's not against the law to steal a body from the grave, as long as you leave its garments in the casket; a world where girls as young as nine are auctioned off by pimps, and no one cares if they get pregnant or are beaten to death; a world where the unfortunate and disabled become forms of entertainment rather than objects of human empathy; a dog-eat-dog world in the truest sense of the phrase.Charles is a a gentle giant, one with the Irish gift of storytelling. He's smart enough to insist on "terms" with his agent and to keep his purse by his side at all times. Initially trusting of his companions and of the doctor who seems concerned with his failing health, he soon learns the sad truth of living in a world where it's every person for his or her self.While I was moved by The Giant O'Brien, I can't say that I liked it as well as Mantel's more recent novels (The Cromwell Trilogy). But she has given us a brutally sharp view of life in the so-called Age of Reason.

[donna828 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 1782 O'Brien, the giant, travels from Ireland to London to be presented by his unscrupulous agent Joe Vance as "The Surprising Irish Giant, The Tallest Man in the World." Surprising, indeed. Charles O'Brien has the compassionate heart of a poet and the gift of storytelling. He is accompanied by three "friends" who wish to make their fortune by any means possible. Every tale needs a villain. Who could fill that role better than the anatomist, John Hunter from Scotland, who needs fresh corpses to hone his skills? I shuddered when I read the ghoulish description of how men desperate for work were trained as grave robbers.When the two men meet as they must to further the story, "his eyes are boring into Charlie; the Giant feels his bones will split open and the marrow ooze out." (116)Mantel writes a fascinating story based on two men in history. O'Brien (who takes the name of the real GIant Byrne), portrays the oppression and exploitation foisted on the downtrodden Irish, while Turner represents the age of reason with his obsessive thirst for knowledge about human anatomy. There is a strange fusion of horror and humor. The horror is self-evident in the grave robbing and other means of acquiring bodies for dissection. The humor mostly came from Charles O'Brien in his pithy retorts to the buffoons around him: In his tale about the pig-faced woman, he replied to Joe Vance's question "Very piggy?" with a typical understated response, "Essence of hog". I loved the numerous Irish fairy tales. He has a very interesting (and unsettling) conclusion to the story of the Seven Dwarves that was particularly memorable.This is truly a unique book by the talented Hilary Mantel. It may not be for the squeamish reader, but I thought it was a good example of realistic historic fiction about the grittier side of London in the late 18th century.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As I've read more of Hilary Mantel's work, I've been struck by how much her narrative style changes so markedly from book to book. Here the story is based, loosely, on Irish giant Charles Byrne (Charlie O'Brien here) and the Scottish anatomist John Hunter. O'Brien and his entourage travel to London so that he can raise money by putting himself on display, and we're treated to several of his traditional Irish stories throughout. We also follow Hunter's various experiments (including on himself) and his desires for additional specimens for his anatomical showcase. Somehow both sparse and lush at once - a short read, but one you'll probably want to linger over.