Tag Archives: Hilary Mantel

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

Posted on by
1
The Mirror and the Light cover

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel is the last book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy which was published in 2020 and this was a re-read for me as I had been waiting impatiently for years for its publication, unusually for me I bought it as soon as it hit the bookshops. At 882 pages it’s a tome and a half. I think that Mantel said that she was putting off the inevitable execution of Thomas Cromwell as she had become so close to him.

However there’s a lot to fit in from 1536 to 1540 – three of Henry VIII’s marriages, one annulment, unrest within the population due to many of them not wanting to give up their Roman Catholic saints and holidays, and wanting to cling on to the comfort of their beliefs, things get violent. I think that the book should probably have been edited to slim it down a bit, but that was never going to happen. Although I enjoyed this book I don’t think I loved it as much as I did at my first read of it, but that’s possibly because I had been anticipating it for years. You can read my original and more detailed blogpost here.

There is a mistake of sorts on page 561 when it’s written that Madame de Longueville (Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots) has landed at the town of Fife. In fact Fife is a county and it was the village of Crail in Fife that she sailed to after her proxy marriage to the Scottish king James V.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Posted on by
Reply

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel was a re-read for me, I originally read it back in 2012, you can read my thoughts on it then here.

I enjoyed the book just as much this time around. Again I was amazed at the behaviour of Anne Boleyn, not that I think she was guilty as charged, but that she was so sure of herself where Henry was concerned and had arguments with him, and threw tantrums. I read the love letters between the two of them, which you can read on Project Gutenberg here. Considering that she strung him along for seven years it’s no wonder Henry was more than a wee bit disgruntled.

I don’t think I noticed at my first reading of it that there were a few mentions of Cromwell’s father Walter going out of his way to help his son out of difficulties, but he had kept it secret from Cromwell, so he didn’t discover his father’s kindness to him until he was an adult and well on his way in his career. Cromwell had hated his father, with good reason as he was abusive and brutal, especially when drunk. But Cromwell’s harsh upbringing helped form the man he became.

I couldn’t help thinking about the Johnny Cash song – A Boy Named Sue.

Another thing that struck me was the number of men called Thomas who were around the Tudor court of that time. It’s not a very common name nowadays, Thomas seems to have been like the ‘John’ of the early 20th century. There are almost no Johns nowadays, but plenty of Jacks.

So why were so many men named Thomas in Tudor times? I can only think that they might have been named after Thomas Beckett. As biblical names go Thomas isn’t a great one to choose as the Thomas in that was ‘doubting.’ It’s a mystery to me, do any of you have any thoughts on the matter? For some reason names have always interested me.

If you’re interested you can read Jack’s thoughts on Bring Up the Bodies here. I’m now reading The Mirror and the Light.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – a re-read

Posted on by
6

I decided to read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall again, I rarely re-read books but in my mind this is a book that I remembered loving, imagine my surprise when I looked back on my 2012 thoughts on it and discovered I wasn’t that enthralled with it. You can see what I thought of Wolf Hall here. I suspect that when I watched the TV series with all the sumptuous costumes, settings and good acting I was enamoured.

Anyway, this time around I did really enjoy it. As it happens I discovered that late at night on TV Wolf Hall was being shown again, so I ended up watching it at the same time I was reading the book and realised that all of the dialogue is exactly as it was in the book.

Wolf Hall begins in 1500 and ends in 1535, but does slip back to the 1520s for a few chapters early on. It was definitely interesting times. I very much doubt that a neglected and abused child in the 20th or 21st century could have risen to the heights that Thomas Cromwell did, which is quite depressing really. Cromwell was definitely a flawed human being (which of us isn’t?!) but especially within his family and personal life, he comes across as being a good guy with really likeable traits.

You can read Jack’s thoughts on the book here.

My 2022 in Goodreads

Posted on by
4

At the beginning of 2022 I signed up on Goodreads to read 100 books within the year, but I actually managed to read 115. I signed up to read 100 books again in 2023. I find it’s a good way of keeping track of my reading, mind you I still jot them down in an old school jotter too, very old!

Anyway, if you’re interested you can have a look back at everything I read over the last year here.

At the moment I’m re-reading Wolf Hall this is a complete indulgence for me, I rarely re-read anything, but I loved that series so much I just had to visit it again. It’s also sort of in memory of Hilary Mantel who died so unexpectedly (for me anyway) last year.

Some Guardian links

Posted on by
2

It’s ages since I’ve linked to any Guardian articles that I’ve enjoyed, but this Saturday’s edition has some particularly interesting pieces, so here goes.

I was on my way to Edinburgh on Friday when Hilary Mantel’s death was announced on the car radio. It’s such a shame, especially as I’m sure she had several more books in her. You can read her obituary here. And Lucy Knight has written an article about her here. I’ve read most of Mantel’s books but I was just thinking that it’s about time I re-read her Cromwell trilogy.

There’s another article about her here, by Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer.

Elsewhere in the newspaper there are extracts from the actor Alan Rickman’s secret showbiz diaries, from the year 2000 to 2011. They’re from his book Madly, Deeply:The Alan Rickman Diaries. He’s another sadly missed person.

I don’t often descend into politics but the mini budget which we’ve just suffered is so depressing, especially if you have already lived through the Thatcher years and know the outcome.

Marina Hyde’s Opinion piece on the madness is well worth reading. “If you are poor, ask yourself now: why not be rich instead?”

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

Posted on by
12

I finished The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel this afternoon, so that took me eight days to read the 882 pages, I could have been faster, but I savoured every word. This last book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy was well worth waiting for, but I can hardly believe that it has been eight years since Bring Up the Bodies was published. I don’t go in for much in the way of re-reading but I intend to read the whole trilogy again at some point in the future.

If you’re at all interested in the history of the Tudors then you obviously know how this story ends, but despite that 874 pages before Cromwell’s execution are still a riveting read and from about half-way through I slowed down my reading, not wanting the book to finish and at the end I felt quite bereft, knowing that I was going to miss being in Cromwell’s company.

Well, none of us is perfect and he had a lot of flaws, but given the circumstances he could have been an awful lot worse than he was and in the end it was his lack of brutality and cruelty to others at Henry’s court that brought his downfall.

Cromwell had always been able to see that given Henry’s nature the possibility of swiftly falling out of the king’s favour was almost inevitable, he could have sailed to Italy or some other European country with some of his wealth, but he left it too late as he loved being at the centre of power.

Throughout the book Cromwell thinks back to scenes in his life from his childhood on, replaying the abuses that he had to put up with from his blacksmith father Walter, and his life in Italy as a young man, the loss of his wife and daughters and before that the loss of his ‘Anselma’, for me this had the effect of a man drowning and seeing his past life playing out in front of him. He could clearly see where he had gone wrong, what he should have done differently in his incredible career but at the time he didn’t think he could do anything different. In reality though he knew that if Henry wanted rid of someone it was going to happen, there was no getting away from it.

I was really glad that Hilary Mantel wrote three and a half pages of author’s notes explaining what had happened to many of the other characters in the book, as it saved me from having to look them all up. She explained that she had been given encouragement from many historians, academics, curators and actors over the years which had included many distinguished names but had decided not to compile a list of acknowledgments. She thought that it would be like a vulgar exercise in name-dropping. I think that’s a bit of a shame as I imagine that if I had been one of those people I would have been expecting such an acknowledgement, and as a reader I would have been interested to know who had contributed help over the years.

Anyway, I suspect that this one will also win the Booker, it’s a great read.

An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel

Posted on by
6
My Friends the Miss Boyds cover

I’m dying to get my hands on Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light which is published later this week but I had a look at my bookshelves and realised that I had an unread book by her so decided to knock that one off the TBR list. An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel was published in 1995 and I loved it. I’ll give it four stars on Goodreads, ideally 4.5 I think. The author is five or six years older than me but her descriptions of how things were back in the 1960s were so evocative to me, it brought back so many memories.

The time slips backwards and forwards between childhood and college.

Carmel is an only child and living in the north of England with her parents in their council house. She has an Irish Catholic background and a mother who is ambitious for her. Karina who is in her class at school has a similar background and when it comes time to go to high school they both manage to get into the equivalent of a grammar school, the Holy Redeemer. It seems they are the only girls to have got there via a council estate. Karina isn’t a friend though, she’s the girl that all the mothers hold up as a good example to their daughters. Karina is clean, such a help to her mother and such and that doesn’t endear her to her peers. There’s a something about her though, she leads a bit of a secret life which Carmel catches glimpses of as she sees her smoking with a group of rough kids.

But the time quickly moves on to the end of schooldays when Carmel gets into a particular London college – as does Karina and Julianne from the same school, and the main topic of conversation in the laundry is about who is engaged, is on the pill, pregnant, thinks they might be pregnant or has just discovered that she isn’t pregnant. Despite the fact that the young women are studying for degrees the most important thing is boyfriends and the cachet having one gives them. The food on offer at the college is dire, but nobody complains, apparently young women aren’t expected to have appetites, their boyfriends would never put up with it.

There’s a lot of comedy and tragedy in this book and I found the ending to be so unexpected, but the whole thing is so well written and observed. It would be an education to female students today to read this as I’m sure there couldn’t be more of a contrast between college girls then where everything was geared to getting married for most of them and putting men on a pedestal, and now since the advent of so-called equality of the sexes where the young women know (I hope) that their future life is as important as any man’s.

Helen Dunmore said in the blurb: ‘Hilary Mantel is a wonderfully unsurprised dissector of human motivation, and in An Experiment in Love she has written a bleak tale seamed with crackling wit.’

Guardian links – Hilary Mantel

Posted on by
3

Todays Guardian Review section is a special issue as it contains the first chapter of Hilary Mantel’s much awaited book The Mirror and the Light. If you’re so inclined you can read it here. I must admit that I haven’t read it myself as it would drive me up the wall not being able to continue reading it until the book is published on the 5th of March.

There’s also an interview with Hilary Mantel which you can read here, she’s speaking to Alex Clark.

Margaret Atwood, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin and others write about their favourite Mantel books here.

It’s difficult for me to say which is my favourite because I loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies but I also loved A Place of Greater Safety which I read fairly recently.

I’m now wondering if I should re-read Bring Up the Bodies before reading The Mirror and the Light.

2019 European Reading Challenge

Posted on by
4

Reading Challenge

This is my first year of participating in the 2019 European Reading Challenge which is hosted by Gilion @ Rose City Reader

This is my wrap up post but I never did get around to posting any of these review links at Rose City Reader. I’ve enjoyed doing this challenge although I joined up fairly late in the year, with the aim of getting me out of my usual reading comfort zone. In fact I think I got mixed up between this challenge and something else as I had it in my mind that the books should have been originally written in another language – but I was wrong about that. Anyway, it’s just a bit of fun so – here goes.

FRANCE – A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel.

VATICAN CITY – In the Name of the Family by Sarah Dunant.

RUSSIA – The White Guard by Mikhael Bulgakov.

GERMANY – A Woman in Berlin by Marta Hillers.

BELGIUM – An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer.

ICELAND – Snowblind by Ragnor Jonasson.

IRELAND – The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien.

ITALY – A Nest of Vipers by Andrea Camilleri

FINLAND – The Exploits of Moominpappa by Tove Jansson

SCOTLAND– Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant.

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

Posted on by
2
Lady Anna cover

I hadn’t even heard of A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel when I spotted it in a second-hand bookshop in Innerleithen. I quite fancied the subject matter though, the setting is the French Revolution and it’s a chunkster at 872 pages. I was disappointed for the first 100 pages or so and I did think that Mantel had definitely improved in her historical fiction with Wolf Hall, but this one eventually got going.

This book has an eight page cast of characters at the beginning, which is just as well as it certainly helps the reader to keep things straight. I think we all have a fair idea of what went on in revolutionary France, but this book begins in the 1760s with the early life of the main participants in the grab for power in the 1780s.

Mantel says in her Author’s Note that where possible she used a lot of the characters’ actual words, whether from their written speeches or preserved writing and has woven it into her dialogue.

She also says: I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions, change sympathies: a book that one can think and live inside. The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide:anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.

I ‘did’ the French Revolution at school but reading this book made it all much clearer to me. I don’t think that my school books mentioned anything about the involvement of the British government who were working to destabilise France as a way of getting rid of King Louis and helped to finance the revolution – but now that I think about it – of course they would have!

This was a great read.