The Mirror and the Light

If you have not yet read Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, now is the time to start. And time is what you have now, right?

Wolf Hall, the first book in the series, features the profound effects of the plague in sixteenth-century London, along with a lot of other great stuff having to do with Cromwell’s deprived childhood, ambitious youth, and surprising coming-to-power. Plus the writing is amazing, as you will soon discover—fully up to the standard Mantel set in earlier books like A Place of Greater Safety and Beyond Black. She is surely one of the great stylists as well as being one of the greatest of historical novelists, and if you do not yet know her work at all, you are in for a treat.

Bring Up the Bodies, the second volume, is slightly less affecting. The Cromwell we loved has become more of a plain old fixer for Henry VIII and less of a character in his own right, while Anne Boleyn dominates the plot. But it is still well worth reading, and you will not be able to forego the next step in the plot, once you put down Wolf Hall.

And that leads us to this final volume, The Mirror and the Light, which is a masterpiece. Having finished it last night, I now feel a bit bereft; all I could do after closing the book was to sit there, stunned and moved. I am not giving away the plot if I tell you that it takes us up to Cromwell’s death—we all know Henry VIII executed him in the end. But for those of you who lack the detailed history, as I did, it’s best to let the plot unfold on its own rather than running to Wikipedia first: there’s a great deal of suspense in guessing which of those around him betrayed him and intrigued to bring about his fall. (If you must resort to Google, try getting the images Hans Holbein painted of Cromwell, Henry, Anne of Cleves, and others who feature in this plot—they will add to your pleasure in reading the novel, in which Holbein himself appears as a character.)

And, as always, there are intense satisfactions to be had in being inside Cromwell’s clever, supple mind throughout 750 pages of beautifully written prose. The writing  here is so good that it may even transcend that of Wolf Hall, which is an impossibly high standard to beat.  We are somehow suspended for the duration: between Cromwell’s interior life and the historical events taking place around him; between his time and ours; between humane sympathy and savage competitiveness (or perhaps competitive savagery). Thomas Cromwell cannot have been an altogether nice guy—he was probably a monster, of sorts—but Mantel makes us love him.