itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

i tried to watch the series and i couldn't get over my immediate conception that the director had 'the thick of it' in the back of their head throughout

got M&L for wobs as requested, already 74 pages in lol (turned bedside reading light off at 3)

i: love love love being back in this world, a matter of HM's tone and flow as much as the actual story i think (since i find it calming despite the matter being distressing) (sometimes i have trhe show on in the background while i read bcz its music now has the same effect)
ii: not rereading the thread yet -- the main upcoming events of course arrive some 600 yrs pre-spoilered obv but still i want to toy with it all at my own speed as it arrive
iii: already i've run across several speech-things that book-cromwell has in his armoury that i now hear entirely in a rylance-cadence (so it's entertaining when TC self-describes and it's the holbein-depicted body, squat and bulky, not MR'S = small and slight)
iv: noting production-wise that some material in the show so far is from *this* book early on not the last one: i'm guessing HR isn't copying from script to future book GRRMartin-style so the TV ppl presumably had sight of versions of M&L long pre-pub? (i mean i know it;s based on a historical tale but these are micro-details not in the history books)

entirely predictably i am reading them all from the beginning again (3/4s thru WH again, once again picking up a lot that i missed, so much is foreshadowed from the start)

confusing to spot jane seymour in the episode of peaky blinders i watched on wed

re-read of wolf hall itself nearly complete

this is my third time through it and it's actively to me curious how different it feels this time (i think i noterd above that my very first read was largely a stress-distraction read… but the second wasn't!)

for example how much of TC's stream of consciousness is subtly horny fascination with women who end up other ppl's wives lol (jane seymour and mary boleyn the most obvious, but the lowborn viz rafe's future wife also, ellen or helen barre, and two or maybe even three others of less note) (ie i dont remember their names)

plus the penumbra of gossip set around this fact -- which is arguably one of the things that eventually undoes him (his supposed eye on princess mary, or hers on him). builds up also to the funny confusion-plotline abt the woman who becomes gregory's wife = jane seymour's sister (who for a couple of pages in tM&tL belives TC is proposing to her)

plenty of nudging already at mirrors and lights, especially the latter -- have to assume this had already formed in HM's head as a shaping metaphor (not that i quite understand it) -- plus also the curious vehemence whenever the jester sexton aka patch is on-stage, cromwell HAAAAAATES him lol, and keeps bumrushing him angrily (and then like half a book later patch is back and TC is saying "what the hell is HE doing here?")

(this hatred is explicable in story-terms, in that patch once work for for wolsey and chose to mock his former employer once he was part of the king's staff, but it's also very extra and in no sense plot-driving: i'm going to argue that the low-born patch who is allowed to say anything acts as a MIRROR for cromwell, throwing unwanted LIGHT on his own self-disgust blah blah… )

finally reading The Mirror & The Light
srsly, just inject this prose into my veins i love it it makes me feel slightly giddy & dreamy.
is that weird?

still wild to me that she can make me feel remotely sympathetic towards Mary or even fkn Henry at times, such is the power of fiction

also the FOOD and TEXTILES in this series my god

(i just finished rereading tM&tL and have a low-key query: has it anywhere been discussed -- or has HM talked abt -- that she plainly devoured thomas harris at some point and certain very identifiable bits re-emerge = wound man, a version of the memory palace, plus also some less easily identifiable moves and tropes now and then)

the notion that TC is in reality the hannibal of the tudors is quite funny to me

i googled this and found a review of "bring up the bodies" which explicitly argues that her love of the historically horrible thomas cromwell is exactly like our love of the finctionaly evil hannibal lecter -- and it was in the evening standard so she very likely also saw it, and (in my theory) went off to read hannibal and clearly liked some of what she read

(i actually think the ES review is dumb but that's not really the point here)

Heh, confounded TC and ES into EC and thought I was back onto another Elvis Costello thread.

Surely somewhere in his enormous corpus he has mentioned Cromwell and/or Lecter at least once perhaps in one of his party/list songs.

a version of the memory palace

This is not exclusive to harris, cf. john crowley's 'little, big' and the aegypt books where it gets traced back to Giordano Bruno, he and it have also cropped up in other things I've read recently that I can't recall (oh the irony). Harris I daresay the most famous though.

Pretty sure it's from Cicero

I started WH some weeks ago and have read two books in between since. I need some headspace, I think.

it's not exclusive to harris no -- i learnt it as "kim's game" from my dad when i was little, so named bcz there's a v basic version in kipling's kim -- but the idea that it's viscerally pertinent to the building of character is more how i responded here (in kim it's just a handy technique that a spy can deploy)

Mantel's prose style is what turns me off reading these; I've tried many times. It's frustrating! People seem to really enjoy them but I must grudgingly say it is Not For Me. I find myself unable to sink into the story because the sentences draw so much attention to themselves. Feature not bug, perhaps?

I find her a great writer.

(i just started a place of greater safety., meeting robespierre etc as children, camille desmoulin is a cheeky sod in this reading)

Greater Safety is beautiful

xposts

to be fair, it did take me a while to start Mirror & the Light — every time I picked it up it felt too dense for what my brain could handle at the time

but I had recently been watching stuff about Mary 1 and other Tudory things & that helped get me in the right frame of kind

so i do understand if it feels like its too much

*mind

The only one that's really stuck with me was Wolf Hall. Bring Up The Bodies felt too short, and The Mirror & The Light too long. Need to re-read all three one of these years.

Watching now. Need to read the books to see how they handle Cromwell's stubborn silences, according to the show his favorite weapon.

We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel, and our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald. This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work. pic.twitter.com/d8bzkBBXuH

— 4th Estate Books (@4thEstateBooks) September 23, 2022

One of the greatest British authors of our time.

70 is not old nowadays. But I'm not so surprised because her terrific memoir makes clear how bad her health has been, or at least was, for several decades.

I reflect that she will be celebrated and lamented, but not nearly as much as the late Queen; but that she was much more talented than the late Queen, and put her great talent and intelligence into numerous books, sometimes very long ones, with great productivity and dedication.

I read Wolf Hall and was quite captivated by it at the time, but never found the time to read the follow up or any of her other books. I thought the bbc adaptation was the best drama series they've done for decades and have watched it at least 4 or 5 times. Her style wasn't really my thing and I didn't like her takes on history when she popped on R4 programs occasionally. But still I'd be very happy if there was a tv adaptation of The Mirror & the Light that is as good as WH.

oh I've just heard the WH director saying he is currently working on a production of The Mirror & the Light for the bbc.

Would I get more out of Wolf Hall if I read a Very Short Introduction-type book beforehand? It’s been on my to-read list for ages, but I once started A Place of Greater Safety and felt like I needed a bit more grounding in the French Revolution to really appreciate it. And if the answer is “yes", any recommendations?

Others will disagree, but a passing knowledge of the Tudors is fine, I think. What she does with Cromwell is so immersive that, as much as she's clearly in love with the source material, it kind of renders the histories irrelevant.

What are her best non-WH books? I've read the whole trilogy but felt it was kind of a sharp decline — the first was amazing and perfect, but the second was too short and the third was too long and abandoned the narrative discipline that made the first two work.

I can't really process that Mantel has gone. This is daftly romantic, but she never seemed quite alive in some way, at least not in the way that the rest of us are alive. I need to work out what I mean by that, but somehow her presence and acuity were always otherworldly (this isn't to disrespect Giving Up the Ghost, which is wholly and brutally alive, but that book stands outside everything she's written).

Loved A Place of Greater Safety - I can see feeling the need for more background with the Revolution because it's kind of like a movie with no establishing shots, she just throws you from room to room over the course of years but that was part of my appreciation.

Lots of gems in the collection of short stories I read (w/ The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher - maybe that was the collection title too).

I've read the whole trilogy but felt it was kind of a sharp decline — the first was amazing and perfect, but the second was too short and the third was too long and abandoned the narrative discipline that made the first two work.

I agree that WH was perfect but disagree that the trilogy declined. I love Beyond Black, but it is baggy. The autobiography is fantastic. I still haven't read APOGS because I am lazy and scared of it.

many xposts to blatherskite

i think Chinaski is otm about Wolf Hall being immersive, you don’t really need a deep knowledge of Tudors aside from Hank 8 is the king, the book really gives you a lot of the context

i mean, i knew so little about the Tudors & English history in general that i spent half the book thinking Thomas Cromwell was OLIVER cromwell bc it was the only Cromwell i’d heard of lol

so so sad about Hilary’s passing. such a beautiful writer, never enjoy historical fiction more than in her hands.Kinda ruins you for other writers in the genre.

Good excuse to explore the rest of her catalog, have only read the Wolf Hall trilogy & A Place Of Greater Safety so far

What are her best non-WH books?

Beyond Black is amazing. Absolutely nothing like the Cromwell books either

Can't wait to dig in.

I thought the prose in Wolf Hall was great. Stood out as such at the time to me. I have picked up a number of others by her which have got as far as to my to-be-read pile.

I’ve only read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, but I thought they were extraordinary. As a writer I can’t even think of who to compare her to, and those books at least she has this fully formed style that is completely modern but integrates fluently with this reimagined, deeply researched 16th century world. The knowing tone, the currents of sardonic humor, it’s a really singular voice.

otm. her writing has such a light touch in terms of reading but there’s so much craft in it, really a delight to read

wow, can't wait. Thanks, all.

place of greater safety is a fever dream, in the best way, and the blistering pace once it gets to the actual revolution is thrilling. i maybe could’ve used more knowledge of the revolution, especially since the novel focuses so tightly on paris and doesn’t dwell on the geopolitical ramifications, but i honestly preferred reading the book then going down a wiki wormhole with mantel’s characterizations in mind

Maybe I'll make that my next Mantel read — the third in the Cromwell series doesn't really appeal to me, from what I've read. The first two were so good that I kind of don't want to spoil them by reading what may be a lesser or unnecessary iteration.

i didn't find the mirror and the light to be a let-down, except in the unavoidable sense that the central character -- whose consciousness is the making of the world and the feel of the world, its intelligence, its drive -- is at the close of this book decisively unmade, and the shadow of this, which is not exactly a surprise to anyone as a reader, colours yr response to his decisions throughout: yr watching someone whose joy was a control he'd entirely earned for himself (while surrounded by those who have it handed to them), and yr pleasure in being with him was also this control of course, and yet here you know from the outset that he no longer has it and is actually making bad choices… so there's an ill-fashioned feel where this wasn't so before. he seems doughy and fallible and you don't like him so much like that (so you like the book less)

soes she handle this change of mode as well as she might? i'd like to see the argument that she doesn't, as opposed to ppl simply projecting their disappointment in the inevitable shape of the plot onto the judgments abt its quality -- it is after all the tale of a colossal political defeat which the mind we're in (i mean crom not mantel) wants us to believe is undeserved, and that feels bad!

(but it doesn't mean the book is bad)

also i want someone to explain the mirror and the light as a metaphor: it's kind of spelled out a couple of times but i still don't really get it

it in no sense spoils the earlier books, though some of the stories in them are retold or otherwise complicated (we also learn more abt TC's youth and abt italy)

yeah you are otm re cromwell’s loss of control in mirror & light makes him less appealing + book less so as a byproduct— it took me a long time to finish that one but i could never put my finger on why

a place of greater safety is great but def less immersive at first compared to wolfhall - it took me longer to grasp the context & who’s and and where’s of it all but once shit pops off it’s great

I read somewhere that Mantel had the final scene first and she worked everything backwards from there. I think in the early books, Cromwell clearly gets away from her, in the best of ways, but the closer she gets to the final scene, the less Mantel is able to avoid the inevitable. The writing inevitably becomes more cramped; Cromwell seems to vibrate on the page rather than leap out of it or bestride it the way he does in the early parts of the trilogy. That emotional teleology is what colours the books as they tumble toward the inevitable.

I've never been entirely sure about the mirror and the light. It seems to function as a free-floating metaphor for a bunch of things - not least the writing process.

I bought A Place of Greater Safety yesterday at the bookshop and checked Fludd out of the library this morning. May go with the 174-page novel first.

as an index of HM's self-discipline it's worth reading up on where the secondary characters in the wolf hall trilogy end up (norfolk or wriothesley or TC's son): which she well knows but obviously cromwell can't (he's as haunted as any mantel character, but not by his posthumous future) -- anyway there's dozens of ironies and foreshadowings she could have played with, perhaps to mitigate the sense of suffocating doom, imagined glimpses of ways out -- but she just doesn't, which has to be a choice

meanwhile im rewatching the TV show like a boss

Cromwell is haunted by his inevitable demise though isn't he - even if it's unconscious? He knows that his role means death at some point, no matter how confident he seems. Perhaps the choice was to not present him as weak in this regard? I need to re-read but I sense there must be dreams and visions that hint at escape.

the text is here and there haunted by the text of the moments of the demise (to be non-spoilery abt it) (and obscure lol) so maybe in that sense; my memory of his dreams and visions is that he's more shut into them than not but i'd also have to reread to be sure

About to finish A Place of Greater Safety.

What a strange little book Fludd is.

rereading A Place of Greater Safety again <3

I have missed these floppy-haired revolutionaries