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Loading... Bring Up the Bodies (2012)by Hilary Mantel
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Once again Hillary Mantel presents us with a Man Booker winner, the continuation of "Wolf Hall", her fictional account of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII. This book takes us through the downfall of Anne Boleyn and her family and the rise of Jane Seymour and hers. We start to see the results of Thomas's long game. So very subtle. One did not want to be on his bad side. This is a wonderful book in a wonderful series. ( ) Extraordinary. I've been in Tudor England for the duration. Such an evocative, tactile read, bringing with it a real sense of place and time. And unusually, I found the book and recent BBC TV adaptation really complemented each other, each adding to my enjoyment and understanding of the period. Some of the facts might be little known or in dispute, but this is a fine book to bring one face-to-face with the difficulties of staying in favour,on the right side of the religious divide, and even alive, at Henry VIII's court. “…it is no small enterprise, to bring down a queen of England.” So says Thomas Cromwell, who in Bring up the Bodies finds himself charged with doing just that…again. It’s unlikely that anyone reading this novel is being introduced to its major players for the first time. Henry VIII and his many wives have been fiction fodder for centuries. But Mantel’s version of the downfall of Anne Boleyn, her family and her courtiers feels brand-spanking new even to those who have read all the novels and watched all the dramas. It’s a matter of perspective. To see this history, much of which is unreliably recorded at best, from the point of view of the man most responsible for carrying out the King’s wishes, casts it all in a clearer and much less romantic light than many others have done. In Henry’s Court, queens, no less than advisors, are replaceable. MUST be replaceable if they do not fulfill the duties and meet the needs of the King, whatever the laws of man and God seem to dictate to the contrary. Cromwell himself knows quite well that he is not exempt from this rule. “Sometimes he wakes in the night and thinks of it. There are courtiers who have honourably retired. He can think of instances. Of course, it is the other kind that loom larger, if you are wakeful around midnight.” Logic suggests that one day, possibly without warning, Henry will turn on him, and his efforts to satisfy the King’s desires will be viewed as treason when those desires change once more. So far, that day has not come. His heart is not faint, and his scruples do not trouble him. He methodically removes the stumbling blocks –most of them human—from the path King Henry has chosen to follow. And then it is inevitable that someone will ask “…if this is what Cromwell does to …lesser enemies, what will he do by and by to the king himself?” Mantel’s style can be challenging, but I have not found it so since becoming absorbed in the first 50 pages or so of Wolf Hall, to which Bring up the Bodies is a sequel. Her research, imagination and storytelling skills have made her one of my favorite contemporary authors. May she live and prosper to recount the rest of Cromwell’s fascinating contributions to English history. We all know, or can easily find out, whether it is Henry or Crumb who will bring the other down. But how we long to hear it from the inimitable vantage point Mantel has established.
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. Geen gehijg tussen de lakens in Bring up the bodies (Het boek Henry), geen hete kussen bij maanlicht. Toch is Hilary Mantels versie van de perikelen van de Tudors de meest opwindende ooit. 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. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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? No library descriptions found.
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumHilary Mantel's book Bring Up The Bodies was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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