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Loading... The Giant O'Brienby Hilary Mantel
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 The Giant, O'Brien offers a different and more bizarre glimpse of unquiet history. More like Swift than Scott, its dazzling technique has Swift's way of taking the extraordinary for granted, while demurely drawing our attention to some silly spectacle that attracted the crowds. To London in 1782 came the Irish Giant, a freak well over seven feet tall, spied out in the bogs by an unscrupulous agent who lures him to the rich center of the civilized world, a place where poverty can be even direr than it was among the Irish cabins, and injustice still more commonplace. Mantel herself is one of the great 20th century storytellers, and in The Giant, O'Brien she returns to the late 18th century world she mastered in her acclaimed novel A Place of Greater Safety. At her best -- and there are passages in The Giant, O'Brien that are breathtaking in their imaginative daring, their word-magic and their philosophical reach -- she is a novelist without peer in her generation, who deserves to take her place among the greatest of all historical novelists.
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Unfortunately, O'Brien's height attracts more attention than he might like: John Hunter, a surgeon, becomes fascinated with the giant and obsessed with the possibility of dissecting him after he's dead. Thus Mantel sets up the central conflict of her novel: Hunter's thirst for knowledge and fame versus O'Brien's conviction that without his body his soul cannot go to heaven. In the mean streets of 18th-century London, the author explores the division of soul and body, imagination and rationalism, as she juxtaposes the two men's lives. In this collision of cultures and points of view, she offers no easy answers, but instead turns a disturbing spotlight on questions that continue to resonate to the present day. --Alix Wilber
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:05 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English
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. (