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?<\/p>\n
Wolf Hall, <\/em>the first book in the series,\u00a0features the profound effects of the plague in sixteenth-century London, along with a lot of other great stuff having to do with\u00a0Cromwell’s deprived childhood, ambitious youth, and surprising coming-to-power. Plus\u00a0the writing is amazing, as you will soon discover\u2014fully up to the standard Mantel set in earlier books like A Place of Greater Safety<\/em> and Beyond Black<\/em>. She is surely one of the\u00a0great 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.<\/p>\n Bring Up the Bodies<\/em>, the second volume, is slightly less\u00a0affecting. The Cromwell we loved has become\u00a0more 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n And that leads us to this final volume, The Mirror and the Light<\/em>, which is a masterpiece. Having finished\u00a0it last night, I\u00a0now feel a bit bereft; all I could do after closing the book was to sit\u00a0there,\u00a0stunned and moved. I am not giving away the plot if I tell you that it takes us up to Cromwell’s death\u2014we all know Henry VIII executed\u00a0him 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.\u00a0(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\u2014they will add to your pleasure in reading the novel, in which Holbein himself appears as a character.)<\/p>\n And, as always,\u00a0there are intense satisfactions to be had in\u00a0being inside Cromwell’s clever, supple mind throughout 750 pages of beautifully written prose.\u00a0The writing \u00a0here is so good that it may even transcend\u00a0that of Wolf Hall<\/em>, which is an impossibly high standard to beat. \u00a0We are somehow suspended for the duration:\u00a0between Cromwell’s interior life and the historical events taking place around him; between his time and ours; between humane sympathy and\u00a0savage competitiveness\u00a0(or perhaps competitive savagery). Thomas Cromwell cannot have been an altogether nice guy\u2014he was probably\u00a0a monster, of sorts\u2014but Mantel makes us love him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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,\u00a0features the profound effects of the plague in … Continue reading