This is the follow up to Every Day is Mother's Day. It is more coherent than the first volume: the basic plot is that ten years have passed since the first story and Muriel, who in book 1 was a rarely-speaking strange character supposedly of limited intelligence, has 'educated' herself in how to pass as a human being and sets out on a quest of revenge once she is released from a mental hospital under the 1980s Care in the Community Thatcherite initiative.

Again, this is billed as dark humour though a lot of it is not actually funny. Characters are constantly at cross purposes with each other, the nadir of this being the phone call between Colin's daughter Suzanna and his ex-lover Isabel. Isabel is now married and an alcoholic, and the connections between all the characters become more convoluted though not exactly believable. A lot of loose ends are tied up from the first book, such as who was the father of Muriel's baby. Part of Muriel's revenge is getting back her (murdered) baby, which would involve a second murder. Meanwhile she tricks and manipulates those she hates, in the guise of two different personas she bases upon people she knows, and commits murder along the way managing to pin it on another character.

It was hard yet again to feel sympathy for the characters though I had a little for Colin's luckless sister Florence. The ending is a damp squib, totally inconclusive - and what was Muriel waiting for back at her old home? The logic of the situation surely called for her to revisit the canal. Anyway, I didn't like it any better than its predecessor so again it is a 2 star rating from me. ( )

Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel - very Good

I really shouldn't put off writing down my thoughts on the books I read, it's been almost a month since I read this and I've read another 4 and a half since then. Nevertheless, this one has stuck with me.

Written back in 1986 well before the dizzy heights of Wolf Hall et al, this is a very strange little book. Bleakly, darkly funny and a little disturbing, the story centres around Murial Axon, newly released from an institution and hell bent on destroying those she blames for putting her there.

I'm trying not to put any spoilers in, but the characters we meet have all got more than just Murial in common and the story builds to a final denouement which leaves you wondering about many things.

This settles for me that Hilary Mantel is an author I need to backtrack on.

Definitely more than just a writer of historical fiction.
( )

I came to read this without any inkling the characters continued an earlier story by the author - nor did I find out until I'd finished it. An 80s period piece, with the occasional hint of themes the author revisited later in "Beyond Black".

The blurb says this is full of dark humour. If so, then I’m afraid I must have lost my sense of humour. I found it full of unsympathetic characters about whom I could not care less. Disappointing, after I have enjoyed everything else I have read by this author. ( )

At the end of Hilary Mantel’s first novel, “Every Day is Mother’s Day,” Muriel Axon is sent to a psychiatric institution after a series of unpleasant events that lead to the death of both her infant and her mother Evelyn. “Vacant Possession” takes place ten years later, and recounts Muriel’s time in the asylum and the period after her release, during which she hatches a complicated scheme to take revenge on the people whom Muriel blames for those deaths. Along the way, she takes on a variety of identities, including that as Lizzie Blank, the housekeeper for the Sidney family, who now live in the house Muriel and Evelyn used to share, and as “Poor Mrs. Wilmot,” a cleaner at the hospital where Isabel Field’s father is a patient. Isabel, as readers of the first book will remember, is the social-worker assigned to the Axons, who had an affair with Mr. Sidney. In “Vacant Possession” yet more connections between the Fields, the Axons, and the Sidneys are revealed. Indeed, coincidences run rampant in this book, and the tangled connections between the main characters go on and on. But never mind: the story is gripping and wickedly funny, and once again displays Ms. Mantel’s wonderful skills as an author. ( )