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A review by matthewcpeck
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
4.0
Rarely have I gone from hating a book so much at the start to adoring it at the finish as I did with Mantel's previous installment in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, 'Wolf Hall'. I was anticipating the same reaction to its sequel, but I was helplessly obsessed from the first pages.
That being said, I still don't understand why Mantel feels she has to employ a bizarre pronoun gimmick with her main character (always 'he', never Cromwell unless absolutely necessary), though I had a lot less trouble following the dialogue this time around, even with the countless Thomases and Harrys and courtier-gossip. 'Bring Up The Bodies' is sleeker, tighter, and more propulsive than 'Wolf Hall'. The revisionist characterization of Thomas Cromwell grows ever more complex and human - he's a rationalist ahead of his time yet ethically ambiguous in his service to Henry VIII. And we all know what happened, but the climactic pages, with Anne Boleyn's execution, will disturb you for days.
That being said, I still don't understand why Mantel feels she has to employ a bizarre pronoun gimmick with her main character (always 'he', never Cromwell unless absolutely necessary), though I had a lot less trouble following the dialogue this time around, even with the countless Thomases and Harrys and courtier-gossip. 'Bring Up The Bodies' is sleeker, tighter, and more propulsive than 'Wolf Hall'. The revisionist characterization of Thomas Cromwell grows ever more complex and human - he's a rationalist ahead of his time yet ethically ambiguous in his service to Henry VIII. And we all know what happened, but the climactic pages, with Anne Boleyn's execution, will disturb you for days.