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 ...
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