(3) "Vacant Possession." Hilary Mantel's work is informed by rage. It's rage about gender inequality. Her first novel--"A Place of Greater Safety"--was dismissed by male critics. One complained that there was "too much discussion of wallpaper." (Mantel mentioned wallpaper exactly once in 750 pages.) Mantel suffered for years from endometriosis, which was dismissed and/or misdiagnosed by several male doctors. Asked what era she would most like to write in, she says, "Now is as good a time as any for female writers." (Which is *not* to say that it's a g reat time for female writers.) One of her early novels, "Eight Months on Ghazzah Street," concerned the brutal treatment of women Mantel witnessed when she actually lived on Ghazzah Street. There's a sense of rage, also, in Mantel's thoughts on the treatment of (female) writer Anita Brookner: "Brookner is the sort of artist described as minor by people who ...