Displacement, Memory, Loss, and Identity Quest in the Novels of Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel is considered one of the most famous contemporary novelists. Winner of two consecutive Booker prizes, Mantel, in her novels keeps on exploring such themes as Identity Quest, Displacement, Memory and Loss. She herself felt being a marginalized citizen of U.K., because she was born on Ireland. Her own life experiences matches with her characters who always remain on a quest for Identity and who always carry a past with them which keep on haunting them. Hilary Mantel tells Sally Vincent that most people refuse to remember their childhood. Though- her memoir does not flinch from terror, sickness, separation. But will committing her past to paper lay her ghost to rest? She herself replies. She tells Marrianne Brace that she survived the devil of girlhood and had to wrestle with serious illness. She has written a memoir to banish the demons. In the present paper I have tried to connect all pervasive themes of Displacement, Memory, Loss, and Identity Quest in the novels of Hilary Mantel with her own life.