The inimitable Cromwell gets an exquisite sendoff
Hilary Mantel wraps up her Tudor trilogy with ★★★★ “Mirror & the Light.”
a head of state, vain and inept, surrounded by men who bend to enable and justify his worst impulses and decisions – I’m guessing that wasn’t too hard. Now give this man the power of the monarchy, to let his personal inclinations dictate his foreign policy, to name his enemies traitors, and to have them imprisoned and executed at his pleasure.
Hilary Mantel welcomes you back to Tudor England in “The Mirror & the Light” (Henry Holt, 784 pp., ★★★★), where Henry VIII has just done away with his second wife, Anne Boleyn, with the help of his most trusted adviser: the embroiled, ruthless, visionary hero of Mantel’s masterwork trilogy, the endlessly compelling Thomas Cromwell.
“Mirror” picks up right where 2012’s Man Booker Prizewinning “Bring Up the Bodies” left off, opening in Cromwell’s unmistakable point of view, which we follow for the duration of this immense, intricate novel: “Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away. A sharp pang of appetite reminds him that it is time for a second breakfast, or perhaps an early dinner.”
Anne Boleyn’s marriage and downfall provided a thrilling engine to both “Wolf Hall” (also a Man Booker Prize winner, in 2009) and “Bring Up the Bodies.” The final and longest Cromwell novel lacks the blazing focus of the prior two – it’s a slower read, with more slack in the intrigue and rumination in the prose.
But every page is rich with insight, the soul-deep characterization and cutting observational skill that make Mantel’s trilogy such a singular accomplishment. With two queens gone, and with advisers and clergy, courtiers and aristocrats fallen in and out of Henry’s fa
vor, Cromwell understands better than anyone how fast his fortunes may turn, how dependent he is on the whims of an unreasonable man: “You cannot falter, he thinks, and you must not. You must crunch up the enemy, flesh, bones and all. You cannot afford to fail, you must bring Henry good news, you must dredge it up from somewhere.”
Even as he rises, from humble, violent roots to the heights of wealth and nobility, his fall feels ever imminent – one jealous rumor, one good-faith mistake away.
His common background and enormous influence gall his rivals; his methods, harsh and effective, have built dangerous precedents that serve the king, and Cromwell knows they can be used against him.
This sense of doom lends the novel a haunted, feverish quality (as does, at one crucial juncture, a literal episode of fever), a blending of past and present, living and dead: “Why does the future feel so much like the past, the uncanny clammy touch of it, the rustle of bridal sheet or shroud, the crackle of fire in a shuttered room?”
When the end comes for Cromwell, it feels both sudden and inevitable, the thunderous collapse of a house built on sand.
“The Mirror & the Light” is a detailed history, capturing the struggles of church and state, kings and queens, England and Europe, all through Mantel’s exquisite study of Thomas Cromwell, arcing dutifully, beautifully toward this one man’s death.