Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2) in Around the World

Aug 26, 2012 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it

Shelves: location-uk, around-the-world, read2012, booker-winners-and-listed, tournament-of-books

I didn't read Wolf Hall, but if you know enough about English history, this book doesn't require a precursor. The Wolf Hall books chronicle the Tudor period by focusing on the life of Thomas Cromwell, and Bring Up the Bodies focuses on the time of Anne Boleyn as queen.

The book only gets three stars because it was just nothing new. There were moments of excellent writing, but I know the story. Nothing was surprising or different. Cromwell has always been a central figure and a villain, and having ...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Karen Witzler rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-through-royals, man-bookerish, novels-1980-s, nyt-ten-best-books-of-year, women-s-prize-orange-baileys, costa-whitbread, nyt-100-books-21st

Magnificent.

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Apr 01, 2013 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, novels, literary-fiction, historical-fiction

This is the second of a planned trilogy centered on Thomas Cromwell, a minster of England’s Henry VIII. If you’ve didn’t read the first book, Wolf Hall, you really should first for this isn’t a standalone and just knowing the history isn’t enough. This isn’t some generic retelling of the story of King Henry’s six wives from a different point of view. Mantel inhabits Cromwell closely, and his experiences and how he experienced them figure greatly in both books.

If you did read Wolf Hall, you woul This is the second of a planned trilogy centered on Thomas Cromwell, a minster of England’s Henry VIII. If you’ve didn’t read the first book, Wolf Hall, you really should first for this isn’t a standalone and just knowing the history isn’t enough. This isn’t some generic retelling of the story of King Henry’s six wives from a different point of view. Mantel inhabits Cromwell closely, and his experiences and how he experienced them figure greatly in both books.

If you did read Wolf Hall, you wouldn’t have missed that Mantel’s style is unconventional. I went into detail how in my rant on the subject in my review of that book. That style doesn’t change here, except Mantel throws in the awkward "he, Cromwell" more often to situate the reader. I never took to Mantel’s prose style; it was something to be endured because I relished her vivid and insightful way of depicting Tudor times and the figures in it. I picked up Bring Up the Bodies right after finishing the first book, and I think that helped. I had grown accustomed to the style, and it really didn’t bother me--much. Maybe by the third book I’ll fully embrace it? Naw. I still think her ways with pronouns and proper nouns, the quotation mark and paragraphing sacrifices clarity for no payoff I can see, but I can better notice the beauties in her words despite that now. Take, for instance, this passage describing Queen Anne Boleyn and her ladies-in-waiting:

She orders her women out: a vehement gesture, a child scaring crows. Unhurried, like bold corvines of some new and silky kind, the ladies gather their trains, flap languidly away; their voices like voices from the air, trail behind them: their gossip broken off, their knowing cackles of laughter. Lady Rochford is the last to take wing, trailing her feathers, reluctant to yield the ground.

It’s not just that descriptions like this vividly bring Anne and Lady Rochford to life, or that it’s great foreshadowing, but that how he described things often told us just as much about Cromwell. In fact, I’m forced to admit Mantel’s way with this is no less than amazing. Five-star-worthy, really, even if I’m awarding it less because it didn’t quite have a five-star impact on me. And really, I knew the outlines certainly of the fall of Anne, but that didn’t mean this novel didn’t have its surprises, especially in the ins and outs of Cromwell’s thinking and motives. Mantel has this great quality of making you feel how contingent history is, how things could have happened differently. Mantel herself said that after all, though we know how things turned out (if we know our English history), Cromwell didn’t know at the time he was living through it.

Cromwell here is far less sympathetic than in the first book. I felt from the book’s first pages that power had quickly, if not corrupted, then at least hardened him. You know, a trap writers often fall into, fiction and non-fiction alike, is that they fall in love with their subjects and become apologists for them. Not the case here. Mantel gave Cromwell a human dimension and he’s not a stock villain, but she certainly allowed him to act and think in ways that are despicable. And this is an even tauter book than the first. So many writers, especially after having a critical and commercial success such as Wolf Hall, become bloated; they no longer have the discipline to cut and their editors no longer have the power to force it upon them. Yet while Wolf Hall was over 600 pages, Bring Up the Bodies is 407 pages. Middle books in trilogies often sag--this one, I think, is even better than the first book, more gripping with the momentum accelerating with passing chapters. If the time between the first two books are an indication, it'll be about two years until the last book in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light comes out. I can hardly wait. ...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Merrilyn rated it it was amazing

Better than Wolf Hall, great writing.

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Dec 18, 2012 Rosana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical, 2013, bookish-s13-challenge

Once again Hilary Mantel pushes historical fiction to new boundaries. I have to say that after loving “Wolf Hall” I approached this sequel with trepidation – too many times books don’t live up to my expectations and I ended up blaming the author for a reading experience that is lesser than the one I so much desired.

But, like I said, Mantel does deliver it again. And again, as I wrote on my review of Wolf Hall: “Mantel expects a lot of her readers. Her prose is oblique, the dialogues are interwov ...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Lydia rated it really liked it

Surely a page-turner but a more melodramatic than I had wished for. Seems inevitable given the subject matter, i know, but Wolf Hall avoided that fate, being more character-driven and less plot-driven.

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