Meanwhile, Mr Secretary remains sleek, plump and densely inaccessible, like a choice plum in a Christmas pie but I hope to continue my efforts to dig him out'.īonne continuation, Mme Mantel, bonne continuation !! Thomas Cromwell, who is still in need of attention from biographers. James Wood offers far more insight into what he calls Mantel's 'novelistic intelligence', also on the topic of 'authenticity' (where he makes a compelling case that fiction can offer a kind of authenticity that actually surpasses historical accuracy) than I ever could (though I found myself agreeing with everything he wrote, and the examples he cites are the same ones I would cite), so here is a link to his review - I think it is accessible even in you don't have a New Yorker subscription.Īnd finally, a note from Hilary Mantel, promising future delights. The last 50 pages of this are frightening, and frighteningly good. But Mantel succeeds once again, brilliantly.

You wouldn't think it possible to tell the story of the Tudors and make it fresh. But, based on the quality of the writing in the 'Wolf Hall' books, I would. I'm not sure if James Wood actually went as far as to say that he would be happy to read Hilary Mantel's grocery list.

'If someone said to Lady Rochford, 'It's raining,' she would turn it into a conspiracy as she passed the news on, she would make it sound somehow indecent, unlikely, but sadly true.' Of one of Anne Boleyn's ladies-in-waiting: 'There is a pause, while she turns the great pages of her volume of rage, and puts her finger on just the right word' Thomas Cromwell is attempting to sway the deposed queen Katherine of Aragon and says something to incite her displeasure: (iv) I feel impelled to share a few of those sentences with you (iii) I call people up on the other side of the Atlantic, just to read them choice sentences (ii) I am failing miserably in objective (i) above, because I am an undisciplined wretch, completely lacking in self-control, and I just can't help myself (i) I am trying to ration myself to only 50 pages a day, to spin out the experience of reading it just that little bit longer I can only concur, and add a few observations of my own.

The normally flinty James Wood recently wrote what can only be characterized as an extended mash note to Hilary Mantel in the New Yorker, based on this book and its predecessor, Wolf Hall.

Wolf hall and bring up the bodies