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May 9

The Life and Times of Thomas Cromwell: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

Latest thing what I wrote for Tor.com—a long-ass review of Bring Up the Bodies with a lot of blathering about Wolf Hall by necessity included. Loved it, obviously. In prepping to write this review, I actually read Bring Up the Bodies TWICE, and re-read Wolf Hall as well. Mantel’s prose; my god. Delicious.

I haven’t been posting every one of my reviews here lately, but if you’re curious, you can see the whole gallery here.

May 8

“What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless Truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.” Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

Jan 23

“At their first conference, as Wykys laid out the papers, he had said, ‘You’re Walter’s lad, aren’t you? So what happened? Because, by God, there was no one rougher than you were when you were a boy.’

He would have explained, if he’d known what sort of explanation Wykys would understand. I gave up fighting because, when I lived in Florence, I looked at frescoes every day? He said, ‘I found an easier way to be.’” Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Oct 26

“Perhaps fairness abounds. When people complain of their lot, their sneering enemies gloat and tell them, to make them afraid, “Life’s not fair.” But then again, taking the long view, and barring flood, fire, brain damage, the usual run of bad luck, people do get what they want in life. There is a hidden principle of equity in operation. The frightening thing is that life is fair; but what we need, as somone has already observed, is not justice but mercy.”

Hilary Mantel, Fludd

Reposting this, because.

Jul 19

“[Camille] turned away; he didn’t feel he could bear it. He was terribly afraid that happiness might be a habit, or a quality knitted into the temperament; or it might be something you learn when you’re a child, a kind of language, harder than Latin or Greek, that you should have a good grasp on by the time you’re seven. What if you haven’t got that grasp? What if you’re happiness-stupid, happiness-blind? It occurred to him that there are some people, ashamed of being illiterate, who always pretend to others that they can read. Sooner or later they get found out, of course. But it is always possible that while you are valiantly pretending, the principles of reading strike you for the first time, and you are saved. By analogy, it is possible that while you, the unhappy person, are trying out some basic expressions—the kind of thing you get in phrase books for travelers—the grammar and syntax of this neglected language are revealing themselves, somewhere in the back of your mind. That’s all very well, he thought, but the process could take years. He understood Lucile’s problem: how do you know you will live long enough to be fluent?” Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

Apr 23

The heck?

Why have half a dozen people all suddenly reblogged this Wolf Hall quote? And where’s the love for this one?

Apr 12

“There was a moment when Anne gave him all her attention: her skewering dark glance. The king, too, knows how to look; blue eyes, their mildness deceptive. Is this how they look at each other? Or in some other way? For a second he understands it; then he doesn’t. He stands by a window. A flock of starlings settles among the tight black buds of a bare tree. Then, like black buds unfolding, they open their wings; they flutter and sing, stirring everything into motion, air, wings, black notes in music. He becomes aware that he is watching them with pleasure; that something almost extinct, some small gesture toward the future, is ready to welcome the spring; in some spare, desperate way, he is looking forward to Easter, the end of Lenten fasting, the end of penitence. There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn’t. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.” Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Apr 11

“Perhaps fairness abounds. When people complain of their lot, their sneering enemies gloat and tell them, to make them afraid, “Life’s not fair.” But then again, taking the long view, and barring flood, fire, brain damage, the usual run of bad luck, people do get what they want in life. There is a hidden principle of equity in operation. The frightening thing is that life is fair; but what we need, as somone has already observed, is not justice but mercy.” Hilary Mantel, Fludd

Feb 28

“He can’t imagine himself reading to his household; he’s not, like Thomas More, some sort of failed priest, a frustrated preacher. He never sees More—a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod—without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm in you what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what little I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too. Show me where it says in the Bible, ‘Purgatory’. Show me where it says ‘relics, monks, nuns’. Show me where it says ‘Pope’.”

From Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel.

“He” is Thomas Cromwell, the first Earl of Essex, a powerful minister to Henry VIII, and the protagonist of this novel. Which is absolutely breathtakingly good. The prose is so beautiful that it makes me want to cry.