Every Day Is Mother's Day

By Hilary Mantel

Book Overview

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall comes "a giddy cocktail of horror and gleeful anticipation" (Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times).

Evelyn Axon and her daughter, Muriel, barricaded in their once-respectable house, are surrounded by years of garbage--and plenty of family secrets, to boot. They completely baffle Isabel Field, the social worker assigned to help them. But Isabel has troubles of her own: an elderly father who wanders the streets, and a lover, Colin, who wants her to run away with him. But Colin has three horrible children and a shrill wife who is pregnant again--how is he going to run anywhere?

As Isabel wrestles with her own problems, a horrible secret grows in the darkness of the Axon household. When at last it comes to light, the result is by turns hilarious and terrifying.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312668031
• ISBN13: 9780312668037
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A Brilliantly Creepy Book

Don't be misled by the title: Every Day Is Mother's Day isn't an Erma Bombek type look at motherhood or a feminist polemic--it's the best "ghost story" I've ever read. It's sad, funny, macabre, and disturbing. I've read only one other book (Fludd) by this author so far, but she's already near the top of my list of favorite writers--maybe she'll be on yours, too.

Evil Among US

Hilary Mantel is one of a kind. She is inconcerned with surfaces and deals with the subconscious activity of the forces of Good and Evil, both of our own devising and of other realms of authority entirely. EVERY DAY IS MOTHER'S DAY is a story of incremental evil and madness loosed on a selectively perceiving world, the activity of the truly wicked being obscured by the preconceptions and the predilections of those who, sidelong and reluctant, observe it. One little horror engenders another, each larger than the last, until chaos is unleashed and, still, unappreciated for what it is, is embraced by those who are certain to become its next victims. This is a novel of real terror, and part of the horror is that it will make you laugh.

A creepily satisfying read

People who have enjoyed Mantel's more gentle, humane novels like Experiment in Love or Change Of Climate might be surprised by the black comedy of this one. But I became weirdly fascinated in the characters, the occasionally chilling plot, the astringent prose and the biting humor from the outset. Immediately after I finished this book, I plunged into its sequel, Vacant Posession. But I don't recommend reading them when you're home alone at night. Mantel's decription of madness is so convincing, I briefly feared for my own sanity for a minute or two while reading it.