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Loading... Bring Up the Bodiesby Hilary Mantel
An interesting novel that approaches how Cromwell, the main character, goes about his day-to-day life that happens to be at a turning point in history. I didn't read the first book, and my knowledge of that point in early-Tudor history is limited, so I had trouble tracking the action. This did not interfere with my enjoyment of the book, though, as the prose is enjoyable in its own right. (  ) breakerfallen | May 15, 2013 |  pling | May 11, 2013 | Written in the present tense - the reader is with Thomas Cromwell as he gathers and stores information and gossip and uses these in the cause of Henry VIII. Mantel brings history alive and immediate by not signposting 'ye olde historical detail' but by seeming to live it and write it in the moment, with amazing wit and vividness. (  ) LARA335 | May 9, 2013 | Just finished Bring Up the Bodies - grim ending, and she managed finally to make Ann Boleyn slightly human. I note Mantel has now taken to using the rather annoying 'He, Cromwell, [did XYZ]', instead of the vague 'he's from the first book, though admittedly if she just said 'Cromwell' it would distance the reader from Cromwell's mind. The speech marks issue (sometimes she uses them, sometimes not) which many reviews mention I did not find a problem - the use is subtle and though I'd find it hard to explain it does make sense. Others complained that the cast of characters is too vast but again, I didn't find that difficult (some familiarity with the period probably helps). The present tense still irks me, though! ( ) lexieconyngham | May 8, 2013 | The book moves very slowly and could have been a hundred pages less and arrived at the point just as effectively. (  ) niquetteb | May 6, 2013 |
 Here, as elsewhere, Mantel’s real triumph is her narrative language. It’s not the musty Olde English of so much historical fiction, but neither is it quite contemporary. The Latinate “exsanguinates” is a perfect 16th-century touch, and so is that final, Anglo-Saxon “gore.” In some of her books, Mantel is pretty scabrous in her descriptions of present-day England, its tawdriness and cheesiness and weakness for cliché and prettifying euphemism. “Bring Up the Bodies” (the title refers to the four men executed for supposedly sleeping with Anne) isn’t nostalgic, exactly, but it’s astringent and purifying, stripping away the cobwebs and varnish of history, the antique formulations and brocaded sentimentality of costume-drama novels, so that the English past comes to seem like something vivid, strange and brand new. Is Bring Up the Bodies better than, worse than or equal to Wolf Hall? While lacking, necessarily, the shocking freshness of the first book, it is narrower, tighter, at times a more brilliant and terrifying novel. Of her historical interpretations, Mantel says in her afterword that she is "making the reader a proposal, an offer", but what is striking is how little concerned she is with the reader. Her prose makes no concessions to the disorientated: a moment's distraction and you have to start the page again. Mantel, like Cromwell, seems not to mind if we are there or not: she is writing, as he was living, for herself alone.  "Mantel knows what to select, how to make her scenes vivid, how to kindle her characters." We read historical fiction for the same reason we keep watching Hamlet: it's not what, it's how. And although we know the plot, the characters themselves do not. Mantel leaves Cromwell at a moment that would appear secure: four of his ill-wishing enemies, in addition to Anne, have just been beheaded, and many more have been neutralised. England will have peace, though it's "the peace of the hen coop when the fox has run home". But really Cromwell is balancing on a tightrope, with his enemies gathering and muttering offstage. The book ends as it begins, with an image of blood-soaked feathers. But its end is not an end. "There are no endings," says Mantel. "If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. This is one." Which will lead us to the final instalment, and to the next batch of Henry's wives and Cromwell's machinations. How much intricate spadework will it take to "dig out" Cromwell, that "sleek, plump, and densely inaccessible" enigma? Reader, wait and see. Two years ago something astonishingly fair happened in the world of prestigious prizes: the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for 2009 both went to the right winner. The book was Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” and it would have dwarfed the competition any year. “Wolf Hall” was a historical novel that ingeniously revisited well-trod territory (the early marriages of Henry VIII), turned the phlegmatic villain Thomas Cromwell into the best-drawn figure and easily mixed 16th-century ambience with timeless bitchery. Despite a hugely complicated cast of characters and Ms. Mantel’s teasing way of preferring pronouns to proper names, it wound up providing an experience of sheer bliss. It was a hard act to follow. But the follow-up is equally sublime.
No descriptions found. "Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?"--… (more) |
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