SOURCE: “Critics’ Choices for Christmas,” in Commonweal, No. 4, December 5, 1997, pp. 25–7.

In the following excerpt, Baumann provides a laudatory assessment of Fludd and An Experiment in Love.

How many gimlet-eyed and razor-tongued English lady novelists can there be? Evidently an unlimited supply. I was vaguely aware of the name Hilary Mantel, but remained wholly innocent of her work until a friend urged her 1989 novel, Fludd (Penguin, 186 pp.), on me. It's a magically atmospheric book set in England's damp and gloomy north. Father Angwin, a sodden, grandiloquently grumpy parish priest who has misplaced his faith, takes center stage, at least initially. A wonderfully drawn little platoon of nuns, and the mysterious interventions of Fludd, Angwin's new curate (or at least everyone takes Fludd to be the new curate), keep the reader guessing—about everything.

“The church in this story bears some but not much resemblance to the Roman Catholic church...