Every Day Is Mother's Day

In Every Day is Mother's Day Hilary Mantel gives us Colin Sidney, a dissatisfied history teacher who attends evening classes on subjects he has no interest in, just to get away from his wife and children for a few hours. He and his wife never seem to have a conversation that isn't contentious, and the children are sticky horrid little monsters with no hint of individual personalities (in short, quite unlike real children in my experience, where even the horrid ones are "people".) During a creative writing class (in which he writes nothing) Colin latches on to an inept social worker named Isabel who has no life either, and they embark on a hopeless little affair. One of Isabel's clients is Muriel Axon, a slightly retarded woman who lives show more with her mother, coincidentally next door to Colin's sister. Muriel and her mother are equally deranged, but in rather different ways, and what they get up to, grim as it all is, can be blackly humorous. Hilary Mantel has a monumental talent; her writing carries you along and keeps you engaged in the story, even when you don't particularly like the story. The best part of this book was a lengthy scene in which Colin and his pregnant wife arrive late at a dinner party hosted by the head of his department, to find that everyone there is already half pickled on the free booze, and well into a routine of head games to which Colin is very reluctant witness. It's a brilliant bashing of academic "types" who have no real interest in anything and find their only pleasures in intoxication and one-upsmanship. I can't say I greatly enjoyed the book overall, but parts of it made the whole worth reading. show less

Quite good. Witty, literary, sharp. Expects you to keep up, but accessible. Occult, like Mantel's 'Beyond Black.' Interesting to see her earlier take on the subject. Set in the seventies and featuring a philandering husband, dull jobs, misbehaving children, a social worker and her woeful clients. A lot of misery crammed into a small book and somehow dealt with humorously while not irreverently. Mantel is really a genius. I can't figure out why I didn't love it except that it deals with some pretty heavy subjects. Child abuse, I guess. One of the best horrible dinner party scenes ever written. Full of brilliant lines: "Frank whirled about, Sylvia's coat in his arm like a comatose dancing partner".

Evelyn is agoraphobic, she is also getting old and she feels that taking care of her weird daughter Muriel and her house (full of supernatural entities) is becoming too much. But she keeps neighbours at bay and repels the social services advances. Their lives become entangled with the life of Isabel, a social worker, and her new boyfriend, a married teacher who is unhappy at home and at work. The characters are unsympathetic and self centered, and he portrait of mental illness and social inadequacy is hard but humorous. Muriel, with her peculiarities and her imaginative behaviour is the most interesting character of the book. There is tragedy in the story, which it is told with detachment, but there is also comedy and very sharp humour.

A strange book this, apparently the author's first novel. Evelyn Axon is a retired medium, increasingly tormented by spirits in her squalid house - though it becomes clear that at least some of the phenomena are due to her seemingly mentally disabled daughter, Muriel. A parallel interwoven thread follows the latest social worker assigned to their case, Isabel, who is new to the job and already doubting her suitability. She becomes involved with Colin, brother of the Axons' neighbour Florence, although it is not until late in the story that they realise the connection.

Colin is unhappy in his marriage to Sylvia and aggravated by their noisy self-absorbed children. The course of his affair with Isabel is well described and like everything show more in the book carries an air of depressing gloom. Black comedy elements include the stultifying Christmas scene at Colin's family home and a dinner party he and Sylvia attend which gives Abigail's party a run for its money.

It becomes clear nearer the end that Evelyn's deceased husband was a monster - he enticed Florence into his shed when she was a child, making it clear to Evelyn, who tried to rescue her, that this was his preferred outlet rather than risk fathering another disabled child with her - so it's no wonder that her perception that he has been reincarnated tips her over the edge into taking her final horrendous action. She had only married him because her aunt and uncle, who had taken her in at the age of thirteen when her father died and her mother went into a nursing home, gave her the ultimatum four years later of marrying an employee of her uncle's or being evicted. I found one sentence in her backstory OTT and unbelievable - "She cried as the taxi took her down the drive, not because her childhood had been happy, but because crying passed the time." Some of the incidents in the book are obvious attempts to crank up the misery level and it becomes absurd at times. None of the characters are sympathetic and given all this I can award it only 2 stars, for the quality of the writing. show less

Every day is mother's day because Mother (Evelyn), ostensibly the "normal" one in the Axon home (although she is in touch with a variety of evil spirits within the house), rules the life of her daughter Muriel, who is somewhat retarded or somewhat crazy (or both), but definitely uneducated and tormented, with an iron hand. Into this mix comes a new social worker, Isabel, who just happens to be having an affair with the unhappy married brother of the woman who lives next door. With her usual perception and wit, Mantel raises the tension until this cauldron of troubles bubbles over.

Evelyn Axon is an aging medium who lives with her mentally disabled daughter Muriel in a deteriorating Victorian house with a run-down lean-to out back. Muriel’s latest social worker, Isabel Field, is having an affair with the history teacher Colin Sidney, whose sister Florence is one of the Axon’s neighbors. Will Colin leave his wife and three bratty children for Isabel? What is haunting the Axon house? And who made Muriel pregnant? By turns creepy and funny, Mantel’s first published novel is intelligent and eminently readable.

While this book did keep me reading (just to see what is actually happening with Muriel and her mother), I did not enjoy this book. All the characters are fairly pathetic and their lives are awful. It was quite depressing overall.