Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Book Review Title: The Mirror & the Light Author: Hilary Mantel Publisher: 4 th Estate, London, 2020 Pages: 883 Price in India: 799   The first two volumes of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy told us the story of Thomas Cromwell’s rise from a hamlet of Putney to Henry VIII’s palace. The battered son of an uncultured blacksmith and brewer rises to become the most powerful person in England after the king. The first two volumes, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies , described the rise of this shrewd manipulator. The last one, The Mirror & the Light , delineates the inevitable fall of the tragic hero. Mantel’s undertaking seems to be to show us that Cromwell was indeed a tragic hero rather than a mere manipulator who ascended too high. She does that job eminently too. This last volume of the trilogy is as gripping as the other two if not more endearing by its slower pace and more poetic diction. Nearly hundred characters are brought together in this massive book ...

One of the many ballads that were made in the pubs of England during Henry VIII’s reign named the King Littleprick, according to Hilary Mantel’s latest [2012] Man Booker Prize-winning novel, Bring Up the Bodies .  There are many places in the novel where Henry’s sexual potency or the size of his genital organ is called into question.  In a way, the novel is about the King’s lack of “skill” and “vigour” in copulation.  Is it some psychological complex about his sexual skills or the size of his penis that drove Henry to marry six times?  Well, Anne Boleyn was his second wife, and the present novel tells the story of the King’s and many other men’s affairs with her.  Maybe, in the next volume of the series, Mantel will explore this theme further.  Maybe not.  Mantel’s real interests lie in Thomas Cromwell who is the indirect narrator of both the first two volumes and promises to continue that job in the next one too.  Wolf Hall , the first...

Those who live by the book will die by the book’s folly. “After all, as a book man, I should judge a book for its literary merit, irrespective of its subject matter.  Poppycock.” The above quote is from Vikram Kapur’s article in today’s [4 Nov] Hindu Literary Review .  I would have certainly expected more sense from The Hindu editors than this poppycock from Mr Kapur who claims to be “a book man” but depends more on Google than books. Mr Kapur’s article is poppycock par excellence.  He says Hilary Mantel did not deserve the Man Booker Prize for her first novel, Wolf Hall , merely for: 1.       Thomas Cromwell’s name had to be searched by Kapur on Google. 2.       Henry VIII married 6 times. 3.       Thomas Cromwell did not have the temerity to murder Henry VIII unlike Oliver Cromwell who did possess that temerity to kill his monarch and hence is familiar to Kapur. 4. ...