“Learning to Talk” by Hilary Mantel

Not having read Mantel’s memoir, “Giving Up the Ghost,” I was a little befuddled by some of these stories – they return again and again to similar settings and situations but with slightly different characters, suggesting that there’s an autobiographical stratum here that is being subtly, often playfully exposed and hidden by turns. These stories feel far more personal than the ones in “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher,” but the language still sparkles and Mantel’s humor is as sharp, dark, and lethal as in the other collection of hers that I’ve read.