Vacant Possession

Written by Hilary Mantel

Narrated by Sandra Duncan

From the double Man Booker Prize-winner, a savagely funny tale that revisits the characters from the much-loved Every Day is Mother's Day.
Muriel Axon is about to re-enter the lives of Colin Sidney and Isabel Field. It is ten years since her last tangle with them, but for Muriel this is not time enough. There are still scores to be settled, truths to be faced and vengeance to be wreaked.
‘The macabre and wonderfully funny plot has as many twists and turns as a well-made thriller' STANDARD

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Jan 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781471252785

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 Vacant Possession

[pollgott · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At the end of Hilary Mantel’s first novel, “Every Day is Mother’s Day,” Muriel Axon is sent to a psychiatric institution after a series of unpleasant events that lead to the death of both her infant and her mother Evelyn. “Vacant Possession” takes place ten years later, and recounts Muriel’s time in the asylum and the period after her release, during which she hatches a complicated scheme to take revenge on the people whom Muriel blames for those deaths. Along the way, she takes on a variety of identities, including that as Lizzie Blank, the housekeeper for the Sidney family, who now live in the house Muriel and Evelyn used to share, and as “Poor Mrs. Wilmot,” a cleaner at the hospital where Isabel Field’s father is a patient. Isabel, as readers of the first book will remember, is the social-worker assigned to the Axons, who had an affair with Mr. Sidney. In “Vacant Possession” yet more connections between the Fields, the Axons, and the Sidneys are revealed. Indeed, coincidences run rampant in this book, and the tangled connections between the main characters go on and on. But never mind: the story is gripping and wickedly funny, and once again displays Ms. Mantel’s wonderful skills as an author.

[cassandra2020 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel - very Good

I really shouldn't put off writing down my thoughts on the books I read, it's been almost a month since I read this and I've read another 4 and a half since then. Nevertheless, this one has stuck with me.

Written back in 1986 well before the dizzy heights of Wolf Hall et al, this is a very strange little book. Bleakly, darkly funny and a little disturbing, the story centres around Murial Axon, newly released from an institution and hell bent on destroying those she blames for putting her there.

I'm trying not to put any spoilers in, but the characters we meet have all got more than just Murial in common and the story builds to a final denouement which leaves you wondering about many things.

This settles for me that Hilary Mantel is an author I need to backtrack on.

Definitely more than just a writer of historical fiction.

[pennydart · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At the end of Hilary Mantel’s first novel, “Every Day is Mother’s Day,” Muriel Axon is sent to a psychiatric institution after a series of unpleasant events that lead to the death of both her infant and her mother Evelyn. “Vacant Possession” takes place ten years later, and recounts Muriel’s time in the asylum and the period after her release, during which she hatches a complicated scheme to take revenge on the people whom Muriel blames for those deaths. Along the way, she takes on a variety of identities, including that as Lizzie Blank, the housekeeper for the Sidney family, who now live in the house Muriel and Evelyn used to share, and as “Poor Mrs. Wilmot,” a cleaner at the hospital where Isabel Field’s father is a patient. Isabel, as readers of the first book will remember, is the social-worker assigned to the Axons, who had an affair with Mr. Sidney. In “Vacant Possession” yet more connections between the Fields, the Axons, and the Sidneys are revealed. Indeed, coincidences run rampant in this book, and the tangled connections between the main characters go on and on. But never mind: the story is gripping and wickedly funny, and once again displays Ms. Mantel’s wonderful skills as an author.

[janarose1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Muriel spent ten years locked in a psychiatric ward plotting and planning against those who put her away. Her former social worker, her old neighbors and anyone who had crossed her path seems to be fair game.I had a very hard time getting into this book. I found the characters a bit...flat, and the plot a bit predictable. Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this book.

[kylekatz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hilary Mantel is such an excellent writer. This one is about a bunch of relatively normal, screwed-up people and their neuroses, alcoholism, psychoses, peccadilloes, etc. Very British.

[tvordj · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed her book Wolf Hall and i think i've read one other by her that i liked but this one, i didn't really like much. I found it very confusing. It kept jumping around from character to character, most of whom for the longest time didn't seem at all connected. Apparently it's a sequel to another book but I don't think that really made a difference to my confusion. Some of the relevant background got filled in as we went along. The story starts off with a middle aged teacher and his family who are living in an old house that used to be owned by a mother who was a real "mommie dearest" and controlled her adult daughter, Muriel until she died. Muriel has been in an institution for 10 years and is now released. The teacher's daughter is having an affair with a married man, whose wife used to be the teacher's mistress. Muriel, in disguise, got herself hired as a cleaning lady for the teacher's family and she also works nights in a different disguise cleaning in a nursing home type hospital where the teacher's mother is and where the father of the ex-mistress also is, who also happens to be the father of the baby Muriel had when she was younger, (her mother made her kill the infant apparently, this would have been in that first book, i gather). You see how confusing this all is? Anyway, i thought about giving up on it a few times but i stayed with it and was not rewarded with the ending which seemed to leave things hanging. Or maybe it was just me.

[michalsuz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I admire HM's skill with the voices of her characters, the things they say to each other, distinctive, strongly flavoured, a good commentary. Read the book eagerly, but it left a bad taste. It couldn't finish well, but neither did it finish badly. It didn't finish at all, I would have preferred if it had.