Bring Up the Bodies

Such a pleasure to read. I simultaneously root for Cromwell and am disgusted with him. One of my favorite things about this book is that the characters are fully drawn, with motivations that we come to suspect or understand, and yet the familiar ambiguity about whether Anne and her lovers were actually guilty is preserved. As Hilary Mantel says in the author's note, this is not a book about Anne Boleyn, it's about Thomas Cromwell. Still, there is ambiguity about Cromwell, too. Does he understand himself as well as he thinks?

There's a lovely piece about Thomas Wyatt, the poet suspected of having an affair with Anne Boleyn before she took up with King Henry, refusing to allow that poems that seem to be about his own life could be taken literally. At the time, Wyatt was being coy with teasing friends, but the argument becomes very serious when Anne's downfall begins.

I also especially liked the several places where Cromwell explains Henry's behavior, either to his own nephew and son, who are being brought up to be courtiers, or to his fellow officials. His read of Henry is clear-eyed and pragmatic, but for my 21st century mind it is hard to fathom why, seeing so clearly, he would want to serve such a person. And there is why I like to read novels about the 16th century–I like to wonder how those people thought about their world.