Not everyone, readers included, becomes so fully involved with the dialogue. Mantel is certainly blessed. She has been visited by the genius of the place. I remember when I read Patrick O'Brian that I could feel the sunshine and the rocking of the boat. I dreamt about the books, with new adventures and characters. I read the whole twenty volumes three times. I wanted to be able to tell the story from memory. We are certainly great benefactors of Mantels' visitation.
24
HOORAY!HOORAY!HOORAY!
at long last. now as my young friends did with the latest Harry Potter, I can now look forward to reading all three in sequence and then beginning to do so again. like LeCarre's wondrrful Karla trilogy. or Martin Cruz Smith terrific Arkady Renko novels .
Thank you Ms mantel for at last completing this wonderful series.
17
Now I realize that I must read this trilogy!
8
Agree with the fans of the books and BBC series - and also want to highlight the narrators of the audiobooks. Simon Slater (Wolf Hall) and Simon Vance (Bring Up) both did masterful narrations. Looking forward to Ben Miles, who is doing book 3.
8
I've always been puzzled why people are so enthused about yarns like the Game of Thrones when real history -even in a novelized form - is much more interesting -and as this medievalist can testify- much bloodier. OK, no dragons, but Richard of York of England or Peter the Cruel of Castile -and certainly Thomas Cromwell- were far more interesting people and make better characters than anyone could dream up. Bravo, Ms. Mantel!
37
For what it's worth, there seem to this reader to be at least two Hilary Mantel's. One is the celebrated, prize-winning author of ponderous historical fiction which I personally find unreadable. However there is also the major author of a sequence of variously remarkable novels set in the contemporary world, and this latter Hilary Mantel has few peers. I for one welcome her return from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century.
3
@Cautious 16th, not 15th. And few writers of any kind are less ponderous than Mantel. Her sentences sing, her insights are astounding, her feel for the place and time so thorough that you really think you are there. Which isn't to say her contemporary writing isn't also great, it's just that what she's done with the Tudors is exceptional.
18
Special kudos to photographer Ellie Smith for that window-side author portrait — the best of its kind in memory. And the article is wonderful. Time for me to start in on the books!
11
Her take on Cromwell and his relationship with Henry viii, his spectacular rise in an age when commoners could not easily ascend above their status, was eye opening to me. She made him much more charismatic than he’s portrayed in history. It made me a have a greater respect and admiration for this flawed man.
27
Actually, I preferred the simple "he" of the first book. It took a few pages to get it, but then I realized how brilliant it was and I loved it. In Bring Up the Bodies it felt as though she had succumbed to pressure, and the "he, Cromwell" felt redundant and much less intimate. I corrected it in my head, jumping right over the Cromwell every time.
9
@Annie Towne
I thoroughly agree with you--both about the feeling that HM had been pressured into dropping one of the great stylistic trademarks of the first book and about the imperative return of Mark Rylance! (Q.V. my comment of 2/25 and the responses of other worshippers.)
8
Please do not include Philippa Gregory in with the other writers you mentioned, especially not Mantel. Gregory is a disgrace.
I absolutely cannot wait for this next book! I really hope she doesn't give up novels forever. I do not live in Britain, so I have no hope of seeing her plays, I am desperately hoping that Mark Rylance will return as Cromwell for the final series.
23
@Annie Towne
Gregory is a disgrace
Generalizing from an N of 1?
1
Too bad you all didn't read "The Man on a Donkey" by Prescott while you were waiting. It fits so well with the series.
2
I didn’t know A Place of Greater Safety was her first novel. Like a Wolf Hall, it brings to life a big historical event. My favourite Paris novel, I think, and even today, so relevant. Let’s hope Mantel gets bored with plays and moves on to the Russian Revolution.
5
Rereading the first 2 books, getting ready for for Cromwell's end! Can't wait. Fabulous books.
14
“Mantel and I met over two wet, windy days in Budleigh Salterton...”
How I envy the reviewer’s time spent with Hilary Mantel. With BBC 4 as my principal radio station I’ve heard many interviews with Ms. Mantel over the past few years, and she is as interesting and pleasurable to listen to as she is to read. Her speaking voice is arresting as well and instantly recognizable. Next Monday she will be giving a long radio interview to one of my favorite interviewers and what with the “Mirror and the Light” coming out mid-week there’s a lot to look forward to.
15
"A doctor dismissed her symptoms as a bid for attention and referred her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist gave her tranquilizers and an antipsychotic drug and told her to stop writing."
Just wondering how many men have received this sort of medical 'treatment.'
52
Having forgotten Cromwell's fate, I wish there had been a "spoiler alert" at the start of Alter's piece. Greatly admire these works.
7
@Anne That's the trouble with these biographies. The protagonist always dies.
19
The book we'll read slowly because we won't want it to be over.
30
Perhaps it takes a creative novelist to reveal the mind and thinking of a significant historical character. I felt that way when I read Wolf Hall and again when I read Gore Vidal’s Burr about Aaron Burr.
15
When George Saunders' 'Lincoln in the Bardo' was released in February 2017, I adored it - and feared for months that Hilary Mantel would finish her Cromwell trilogy the same year and only one of them could win the Booker Prize. Whew! Mantel kept writing for three more years. Saunders/Lincoln got the award and Mantel, who won it for both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, can now be three for three.
17
"Both “Wolf Hall” and its 2012 sequel, “Bring Up the Bodies,” won the Booker Prize, making Mantel the first woman to win twice, and the first author ever to win for a sequel."
Pat Barker's 1995 winner The Ghost Road was the third book in her Regeneration trilogy, so your statement about Bring Up the Bodies being the first sequel to win the prize isn't strictly accurate. Maybe you meant that Mantel was the first author to win for two books in the same series?
3
I really like Mantel's Cromwell. I am undecided as to whether or not I'll read "Mirror...".
Then again, I've yet to read, nor do I plan to, Mary Stewart's "The Wicked Day"...
1
@HapinOregon The Wicked Day is necessary but not great. It's written totally differently and is a bit of a slog. But only just a bit.
1
I'll never forget approaching the ending of Bring Up the Bodies. Even though I knew the outcome beforehand, my hands were sweating, my heart was pounding in my chest, and my whole body was stiff with tension. I wasn't on edge because I dreaded Anne's fate, it was more the spell Mantel casts over the reader. I felt like I had been walking with the halls and courtyards with these people, like a shadow bound to their rise and fall. You feel the deep humanness of them, and even with the great attention paid to the historical events that surround them, it is the inner lives of the characters that gives each and every decision and the attending consequences so much weight.
I'm desperately excited to read the Mirror and the Light, but saddened to say goodbye to Cromwell (and everyone else for that matter) and this staggeringly good work of literature.
86
My guess is that Mantel was significantly, directly or indirectly, influenced by two works still indispensable for grasping the historical, sociological situation, patterns: Jacob Burckhardt's "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" and Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."
5
Two of my favorite sources (NYT & Ms. Mantel) both agree:
"The Truth Matters."
Bravo! I cannot wait to read this final book of her trilogy!
20
I tried reading Wolf Hall but gave up without finishing. It's just a cheesy soap opera based on historical characters. I understand that many people enjoy it. But not all of us.
5
@NoBadTimes Death by cutthroat, disemboweling, poison, suicide.... that's just enforcing religious order.
Yes, another cheesy soap opera depicting those Brits.
Downton Abbey with carnage! It's good to know how we got here from there. What's in our Eurocentric genetic pool. Starving families at the gates, religious wars, babbling kings.
13
@NoBadTimes -- I'm sorry for your loss.
31
@Mike
What loss?
I read quite a bit (my house is full of books but no TV). Wolf Hall was read by the wonderful book club that I have belonged to for many years now. The majority of the members liked the book. But I was not the only one who didn't.
One thing I have learned from that book club is that we all have different tastes (every once in a while we all feel about the same about that month's book... which can actually make for a less interesting meeting).
Sometimes hearing other's insights changes my opinion of a book. This was not one of those cases. But I always enjoy the book club meetings even when I don't like the book. So in a way my experience was quite positive: I only read about a third of the book before I gave up, had a great meeting, and then didn't waste any more of my time on a book I didn't like.
My original post was intended to let those not already familiar with the book know that not all of them will be enamoured. And that is OK.
11
I cannot wait for the third installment of this wonderful trilogy. The BBC series and the play were great as well.
11
Beyond excited that volume 3 is on the horizon of a bookstore near me. Or amazon. Just pre-ordered. Great feature, too
10
Wonderful to read about Mantel and her future work on Cromwell and her writing and life. I've read almost all her works, including the one about her mother, but Cromwell and Wolf Hall along with the complicated Henry VIII and the period of time was rich. I enjoy Schama too, but Mantel's imagination as Jim from Chicago alludes to makes for excellent reading.
10
I really must have missed something, I did not like wolf hall and quit 1/2 way through. Then I tried to watch the PBS special and quit after two episodes. What is the draw?
2
@Calleen Mayer Good writing.
20
@Calleen Mayer
I have a possible answer. The books combine a few different elements:
1. they create a world in which it's possible to totally lose yourself, so an escape.
2. for those of us who didn't study English history in school, it is a fun way to inform ourselves about this period and the characters whose names we've heard before.
3. The protagonist is fascinating, even as you read the books you're struggling to decide if you agree with him or not. Mantel doesn't take sides.
4. The writing is good. Honestly I'm not sure if I would watch a mini-series of this ...
18
@Calleen Mayer
For me a major part of the draw is becoming so deeply immersed in the wonderful writing that I am Cromwell –and I am definitely female.
15
I wish that Mrs. Mantel would do more to advocate for endometriosis awareness. Her story of a doctor dismissing her pain is all too familiar for those of us living with the disease. She can use her platform to write literature to be used in middle school health classes, so that young women can learn about the likelihood of having endometriosis as opposed to, say, an outdated STD.
8
Photo from "Masterpiece": Claire Foy? Damian Lewis? Where is the brilliant Mark Rylance?
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@R. Koben
My thoughts exactly.
I just hope they have him on speed-dial when it comes to casting "The Mirror and the Light".
13
@N. Smith
Surely there isn't even the remotest possibility that they'd consider anyone else? I can't bear to think about it!
5
@R. Koben
Exactly! Damian Lewis was fantastic "playing" Henry VIII. Mark Rylance simply WAS Cromwell.
20
Wolf Hall was wonderful; I have not yet read the following volumes.
Thanks for this look at Mantell...
6
I literally fell into Wolf Hall at the bookstore. I love historic fiction, but frankly was bored with the tutors. Saw Wolf Hall, picked it up and in a few pages was hooked like no other book before. She turns history on its head, making Cromwelll out to be a Renainsance Man, and Thomas More to be a hypocrite, inhuman. At the end of Bodies, I realized what she had done: turn history over and let it fall clunk right on our heads for the next book. Been a long time in coming but I am chomping at the bit to read it (and my sister and I saw the broadway production, and if this last novel becomes a play I will be first in line for opening tickets!)
17
It's a cliche, but, given a lemon in terms of physical health, Ms. Mantel has made buckets of lemonade.
26
Welcome news, finally, I should now reread the first two!
12
Finally!
5
The Wolf Hall novels are wonderful. And while they are a fun historical read, to me, their true value is to create something that is so touchingly human. Cromwell's love, loss, persistence, and compromise speak across the ages to something timeless and at the heart of the human experience.
59
I'm planning on teaching the trilogy in Chicago in the fall after doing new research on Cromwell, involving the newer MacCulloch biography. The novels are just fascinating. I taught "Wolf Hall" in a course called "Historical Fiction or Fictional History." My favorite English historian, Simon Schama, has a real problem w Mantel's rendering of Cromwell and, especially, Thomas More. Lots to talk about and very much to enjoy. If you have not read the trilogy, try it. Don't let her method in the first volume (the use of present tense and third person in Cromwell's head, as well as the many "Toms" present can cause confusion) put you off. A masterful writer w a vivid imagination.
38
Hillary Mantel is masterful and reminds me of the important role excellent fiction and its writer has in shaping a reader's perspective. Her first two books in the Cromwell trillogy immersed me in a world that felt as real as the day around me. Thank you Ms. Mantel.
47
The BBC series is astonishing, some of the very best TV I've seen. I then read the two novels, and loved them.
Remarkable is not only how well Mantel managed to vividly bring to life persons, a place, a time ... but also bring to view a larger world-picture and historical movements, patterns still with us today in some versions. Making her writing comparable to that of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, et al ...
Notable is her depiction of the struggle twixt the old warrior aristocratic class besotted with privilege and dominated largely by seldom-challenged impulse, whim, arrogance, braggadocio ... and the rising new class of the haute bourgeois, often originating in the ruder petit bourgeois but transformed by contact with the cosmopolitan Renaissance culture of the cities of northern Italy and the Low Countries, a transformation via the high arts of reason, mathematics, law, finance, governing, painting and metaphysics ...
53
@Mr. Samsa
Among the high arts I should've included literature and courtly love. Note that Cromwell says he prefers Castiglione to Machiavelli — indication that he would prefer participating in a more ideal world than the beastly one he must function in.
And of the courtiers around Anne Boleyn, Cromwell wants to protect the poet Thomas Wyatt, probably the only one who has in fact slept with her.
19
@Mr. Samsa
courtly love is a 12th Century concept. It was starting to go out of fashion by the 15th Century. The whole point of C L is that the object of desire is unobtainable. This certainly not the case with Wyatt and Boleyn.
2
@Alison Cartwright
Courtly love with its ideal of rising above the need for physical consummation may have been for many only a fantasy, a dream-ideal and frivolous amusement all along, but even the most improbable fantasies, amusements may have influences over us, alter our behavior.
The gai saber, poetic arts, of the troubadours evidently did make some contributions toward civilizing the blonde beasts, barbarian warlords, helping some become gentler men, with some improvements in their treatment of women. Ideals of chivalry did not die out in the 12th century.
That ideal of love, with mutations, permeated poetry long after, and can be traced back to the ideal of Platonic love of The Symposium.
6
I, for one, am incredibly excited about this. I have been waiting for years for the conclusion of this trilogy. Now I just need to finish the 16 books that I am currently reading so I can read The Mirror and the Light.
33
I will put aside all reading to devote myself to this book as soon as it is available. I have re-read both wolf hall and bring up the bodies, seen the play with Ben mikes and watched the tv series with Mark rylance. I am a fan!
15
I started reading the first two of Mantel’s trilogy as a novice reader of historical fiction. While it has not improved my interest in the topic, it certainly has made me a fan of her work on Thomas Cromwell. She is a writer I wouldn’t ordinarily read. So thank you, Hilary for expanding my reading interest. For me, You are the writer’s writer and a terrific story teller.
26
No other literary fiction has affected me like reading Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, with the exception of Crime and Punishment. The story unfolding via Cromwell's thoughts and ideas is a stunning point of view to write from, but of course, seems the only point of view needed, once one gets used to not depending on the all-seeing author. It's an astonishing work of art and I cannot wait for the third installment, even though I dread the ending.
59
Had similar reaction to A Place of Greater Safety, so relevant today.
7