I thought I would start reviewing the books that I read. Partly so that I read them with a little more thought, and partly so that I read them. Because for some reason, although I love books, I don’t sit down with one very much at all.
So we kick off with the middle book in a trilogy, which is a little arse about tit I grant you, but it is the latest book I’ve read and not everything can be planned so neatly.
Bring up the Bodies begins in the middle of Anne Boleyn’s brief time as Queen. Thomas Cromwell has risen up from being a Michael Cohen style fixer and is now fully established as Henry VIII’s right hand man and so far Anne has produced just one more daughter for the Crown. It carries Cromwell’s story on from Mantel’s first book in the trilogy, Wolf Hall, which leaves us with Henry and Anne’s marriage and Thomas More’s execution.
We know how it ends of course, for Anne, but there is a genius in taking a piece of history well trod and documented, and bringing it to life in a whole new way. Mantel keeps the narrative in the present tense, so pushing that idea of ‘History’ back, and makes the language modern enough for our ears. On top of that, the narrator always sits just behind and occasionally inside, Cromwell’s head, so you have access to only one perspective. But that perspective happens to have an increasing reach and knowledge over the dominions of England, especially the lands and lives of the nobility. So, for the reader, this vantage point reveals a lot.
Now it is highly probable that Mantel has taken artistic licence to make this Cromwell more sympathetic than he really was. A reader will be more willingly pulled along if they’re invested in the main protagonist. There are moments, like when he looks at the first queen, Katherine, in her ‘prison’. They’re roughly the same age but he notes that ‘life is harsher for women’, especially if they ‘have been blessed with many children and seen them die’. This level of empathy may occasionally tip the suspension of disbelief a little for some but it didn’t bother me and reminded me that even Himmler loved his family.
Wolf Hall was lambasted by some historians for painting More in a detestable manner and Cromwell so positively1. But, these books from Cromwell’s point of view and they are novels after all and not a history.2 Even bona fide histories will create a ‘narrative’ and make suppositions where there are blank spaces in the facts.
Mantel’s Cromwell comes across as phlegmatic and Machiavellian – at one point it says he’s read The Prince, which in his estimation could be improved upon! He is (in his eyes necessarily) ruthless but not bloodthirsty, highly intelligent, generous and knows when to take his revenge. This book brings his character to the peak of his powers and the height of his wealth with the dissolution of the monasteries filling the coffers of the Crown.
I do like history. My A-level English History covered the Tudors and I wish I’d had these books around then. I know this is a fiction but the level of research that Mantel has done to keep on top of who’s who and what their relationships are and who they’ve slept with etc. is excellent. It brings it alive in a way that would have made me want to explore the real stories more.
If history is not your bag, you may find it a little unwieldy. There are a lot of characters. Mantel does give a helpful list at the beginning but it can still get confusing sometimes. However, I wouldn’t let the details bog you down. Just sit back and let it carry you along.
1 In defence of Thomas More https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/jan/29/wolf-hall-wrong-thomas-more-was-funny-feminist
theleadlesspencil 
I believe I’ve read a couple of the books in this series and enjoyed them. Mantel’s style is good for this sort of thing and I agree that historical fiction can be useful for learning some of the convoluted and complicated royal history of England. I am in a group that together slogs through Shakespeare’s histories, which I can tell you would not be useful for this purpose. One of the best things I’ve got from this group is a bookmark that lists all the monarchs, what “house” they were in (Tudor, York, etc.) and the years of their reigns.
Yes, complicated is the word! There was a really good bbc tv series called The Hollow Crown that put the Shakespeare histories into a connected form. Well worth checking out if you haven’t done so already.
I believe some of my classmates have referred to this series so I’ll have to check it out!