2022/27: Fludd -- Hilary Mantel

2022/27: Fludd -- Hilary Mantel

He touched the shed’s wall, gingerly, as if fire might have begun in the damp fibres of the wood. Can it be, he thought, that the transformative process is already underway? In these days, he no longer worked in metal, but practised on human nature; an art less predictable, more gratifying, more dangerous. The scientist burns up his experimental matter in the athenor, or furnace, but no scientist, however accomplished, can light that furnace himself. [p. 101]

Reread: I last read this in 2007 (my previous review; 'other times, other manners', as Fludd reflects.) and had forgotten almost all of the plot. It's set in a Catholic village, somewhere in the north of England, in the mid-1950s. Father Angwin is instructed by the bishop to remove the 'idolatrous' statues in the church,( Read more... )