A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel is one of the most absorbing books I've read recently. Set in England and Africa, it is about a couple from Norfolk, the Eldreds, whose memories of their time spent as missionaries in South Africa and Botswana and the tragedy which occured there have shaped their lives and the lives of their four children.
The book begins in England in the present, where the couple live with their family. Ralph, the father, is the director of a religious charitable trust and the Eldreds have opened their home to 'sad cases', as the children learn to call them. While the children have grown up knowing very little about what came before, it has still insidiously affected the lives of the whole family.
The reader is subsequently taken back to the past, learning about the couples upbringing and their time spent in South Africa. The climax is delayed, as the novel keeps cutting back to the present, and I just couldn't put the book down during this section.
It is a family saga, which encompasses a myriad of issues: marriage, evil, betrayal, injustice, forgiveness, and charity. Each character is engaging, each part of the story fascinating in its own way, and I would recommend it very highly if you are looking for a book which will make you think, as well as keeping you captivated from start to finish.
He took one of the peaches and cut into it. It was a yellow-fleshed peach, its skin as rough as a cat's tongue, and its ripeness spread out from the stone like a bloody graze.
It was cooler than Anna had expected, and the air seemed thin. She shrank away from the hooting and snarling of the traffic and the mosaic of faces in the street. At midnight a noise brought her to the window of their modest hotel. Hailstones - frozen chips of ice, an inch and a half across - rattled at the glass. The bombardment lasted for five minutes. It stopped as suddenly as it began. For an hour, deep in the watches of the night, the city was quiet, as if holding its breath.
