On The Mirror and the Light and reading Hilary Mantel

As copies of The Mirror and The Light finally make their way into the hands of hundreds of thousands of readers across the globe, our fiction expert Ben Hunter reflects on the incredible cultural phenomenon that is the Wolf Hall trilogy and how the final book brings it all to a glorious close.

Read on …

Hilary Mantel

It was in my first year as an enthusiastic and highly unprepared part-time bookseller that I became familiar with a certain set of chunky, dour-looking paperbacks. They were a permanent fixture in the centre bookcase of our fiction section, accompanied by a small handwritten sign poking out of the shelf: “Twice Winner of the Man Booker Prize.” Every time a customer brought one or both books to the counter, they seemed to carry an air of certainty that was absent from most other book buyers. They must know what they’re getting into, I thought. I’d never dream of reading something so clever and long and intimidating.

That bookshop is long gone, but public reverence for Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels has never waned. Nor, if I’m honest, has my trepidation about reading them. When publishers in the UK heralded this third and final book in the series last year by putting up the Tudor Rose on a massive billboard in Leicester Square, I had two reactions. “Brilliant!” I said, followed almost instantly by “Oh, shit.”

After years of selling these enormous novels to the public, I couldn’t go any longer without reading them myself.

Over our apocalyptic black summer, I hid myself away and binged on Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. My first impression was that the writing was highly finessed, but weighty and exhausting. I wondered just how so many people had fallen so perfectly in love with the series. Soon, though, it became clear to me just how innovative and impressive these novels are. The characters of Cromwell, Boleyn, Seymour, Wolsey, More, Henry and many more besides are so fully realised, so nuanced yet baffling in every moment. The conquest of reading them evolves the reader’s mindset in a manner that few books in a lifetime of reading ever do.

I spurn myself for ever doubting these novels. They’re masterpieces of storytelling, the English language, and of human understanding. I can see why it is that people are saying that any review of the latest and final novel, The Mirror and the Light, is redundant–that anyone who has enjoyed the prior novels will have 875 pages of ecstasy waiting for them in this one. Some have gone so far to say “Give the Booker judges the year off!”

Of course, I read this ridiculously big, new novel at the first opportunity I got. Yes, the praise for Mantel is justified. All of it. When people say that these books (Mantel herself looks upon the trilogy as one complete novel) are the greatest work of the English language in this century, they do not exaggerate.

875 pages of historical fiction is a hefty bit of reading, even for one who does it regularly. To consume so much writing on one subject, especially as Cromwell goes through great passages of fevered reflection on the life that lays behind him–the life that you’re already so intimate with–has a strange effect on the mind of the reader. Other early readers I’ve spoken to have recalled being utterly exhausted by this book, yet desperate to make it last indefinitely, even rationing out the final pages into small blissful doses.

Portrait of Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein the Younger

In trying to describe the reading experience of The Mirror and the Light, I like to draw comparison to the long psychedelic sequence of deep-space paralysis towards the end of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The hero’s face is drowned in colour and light, and you see his eye staring out in the infinite blackness of space, absorbing things his tiny brain can’t begin to fathom. Is this a hyperbolic thing to say? I don’t think so. (You can rip me apart in the comments.)

To receive this book while we are alive to read it is a blessing. To have it arrive at this particular moment of political, economic, and spiritual crisis seems too good to be true. Though the author went to great lengths to establish accuracy and eliminate anachronism in the trilogy, there’s so much going on that one can align with 2020. The Tudors’ ugly break-up with the Vatican parallels today’s Brexit controversy. Feeble, ill-tempered, pre-occupied and rampantly misogynistic King Henry is frighteningly similar to the man inside the Oval Office. And, perhaps most of all, the ‘tall poppies’ fallacy that dogs Cromwell plays to our contemporary questioning of anyone who dares to define themselves as self-made.

But above all, this trilogy is just an excellent thing to read. It’s a story of wonderful, fallible human beings trying to do extraordinary things for themselves, and, in some cases, their society, and the myriad of ways that it all goes wrong.

I’m so happy that I finally read these books. I’m better for it. You will be too.

The Mirror and the Light is out now. Limited signed copies are available here and regular hardcover editions here.

The Mirror and the Light

by Hilary Mantel

'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...

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About the Contributor

Ben Hunter

Ben is Booktopia's dedicated fiction and children's book specialist. He spends his days painstakingly piecing together beautiful catalogue pages and gift guides for the website. At any opportunity, he loves to write warmly of the books that inspire him. If you want to talk books, find him tweeting at @itsbenhunter