I confess, in the days leading up to the publication of this
sequel to the 2009 Man Booker Prize Winner Wolf
Hall, I thought of little else. Why? Because Wolf Hall was a spectacular novel; so accomplished and so unusual,
I have read little else like it. It was a feast of a book. Scattered throughout
with glancing references to a particular religious writing or a particular kind
of cloth, Hilary Mantel deftly weaves together the fabric of her novel,
building a vivid, convincing image of Tudor England. Unlike other historical
novelists, who tend towards biography and explain away every detail, Mantel
keeps herself hidden, simply placing her reader within the consciousness of Thomas
Cromwell. The result is complete immersion.
At the end of Wolf
Hall, Cromwell had seen the fall of his old master, Cardinal Wolsey and the
and the rise of the sharp, glittering Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In
Bring Up The Bodies, England is in a
dangerous position, forced into isolation from the rest of Europe following the
break with Rome. At court, rumours build, as Anne fails to bear Henry an heir
to secure the Tudor line. Thomas Cromwell, who since Wolf Hall has risen in the world and is now the Chief Minister for
Henry, must find a way for the king to break with Anne and marry the newest object
of his desires; the meek and mild Jane Seymour. To do so, Cromwell must reshape
the truth in order to incriminate the queen. The result is a novel which is
more frightening and disconcerting than Wolf
Hall.
One of Mantel’s great accomplishments is her
characterisation of Cromwell. A famously nasty and Machiavellian figure,
Cromwell is often portrayed as a villainous, two-dimensional character in
popular culture. Mantel’s Cromwell is wholly human. Woven throughout with Cromwell’s
memories of his time serving as a mercenary in France or being beaten to a pulp
by his blacksmith father, the narrative offers glimpses of the shadowy beginnings
which shaped Cromwell’s character. The beauty in Mantel’s characterisation,
however, lies in the gaps, the things that we aren’t told. We see Cromwell’s
extraordinary mind at work as he wins a game of chess, provokes men into
accidentally confessing their darkest secrets and shapes accusations of treason
and adultery out of facts that may or may not be true, but we don’t know how he came to be capable of these
things. A little light is shed on Cromwell’s past, but the rest remains concealed.
It is this which really draws the reader. But Mantel’s Cromwell, for all of his
ruthlessness, is also portrayed as a kind man, and a man who feels. The scenes in which he remembers
his dead children, or visits the dying Katharine of Aragon are often
heart-wrenching and profoundly moving.
The mercurial, ambiguous nature of Mantel’s writing
similarly pervades her handling of Anne’s sharp fall from favour. She manages to create a very real sense that
Cromwell and the novel’s characters, have no idea of what is about to unfold.
This, for historical fiction which often tells its stories backwards, from the
vantage point of the present day, is a real achievement. Additionally, she
captures the tenuous nature of the accusations brought before Anne Boleyn. In a
recent article for the Guardian, Mantel wrote that it is unknown whether Anne
had lovers or not. Indeed, the evidence used to incriminate the queen was mystifyingly
insubstantial. In Bring Up the Bodies Anne
appears guilty and not guilty, and whilst Cromwell may have an underlying sense
of her innocence, he must secure her death in order to satisfy the king. As
such, Bring Up the Bodies ends with
the chilling executions of the queen and her alleged lovers. The twisted, decapitated
corpses, loaded onto a cart to be disposed of, leave the reader with a shocking
sense of the measures that must be taken to satisfy the will of the king. In
this respect, Bring Up the Bodies is
a terrifying novel.
At the end of Bring Up
the Bodies, it is clear that Cromwell’s sense of self has been fractured by
the lengths he has gone to to ensure the death of a queen. In reshaping and manipulating
the truth, something has shifted, and Cromwell becomes aware that he is moving
closer to his own demise. One day he will
be one of the bodies that must be trampled so that a king can have his way.
Bring Up the Bodies is
a stunning novel, gleaming with brilliance. Beautifully dark and profoundly moving, this is a book that
really gets under your skin. Astonishingly good.
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies are both published by Fourth Estate.
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies are both published by Fourth Estate.
