The Mirror and the Light
Ratings1
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings1
Average rating3.5
The Sunday Times bestselling sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy. A Guardian Book of the Year * A Times Book of the Year * A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year * A Sunday Times Book of the Year * A New Statesman Book of the Year * A Spectator Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020 Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 'Mantel has taken us to the dark heart of history...and what a show' The Times 'If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?' England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage. Sunday Times Bestseller (08/03/2020)
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After not being a huge fan of Wolf Hall I ended up being very pleasantly surprised by its sequel Bring Up The Bodies. As a result of how much I liked Bring Up The Bodies I went into The Mirror And The Light with fairly high expectations. Unfortunately, these expectations were not met, and I feel that this book is a lot more like Wolf Hall than its sequel. That's not necessarily the worst thing. Despite my personal apathy towards Wolf Hall from an emotional standpoint, I will admit that it's very well-written and is clearly the result of a lot of research into the time period. The same good qualities are firmly present in The Mirror And The Light. Mantel puts in just enough levity to make the book not drag (too much) and it's clear that she knows her stuff. One thing I will give this book in comparison to Wolf Hall is its character work. Perhaps it's because we've now spent three books with these characters, but I feel like Mantel is just better at making her characters ones that a reader can get attached to here compared to Wolf Hall. Thomas Cromwell remains an interesting if unsympathetic protagonist and King Henry is a fascinating central figure as well. But that's where my praises end because this book does drag a decent amount and it does so without making me care about it. The fact that I feel so apathetic towards a 750-page book that I just finished is a bad thing. I don't think The Mirror And The Light is an awful book or even a bad one. But it is just... lacking something that I know Mantel could provide.
