We do not know how to proceed from minute to minute, yet somehow we do, and another night falls on us in Greenwich, at Hampton Court, at Whitehall. Our instructions are full of snares and traps, which mean as we gain we lose. We servants of the king must get used to games we cannot win but fight to an exhausted draw, their rules unexplained. Cromwell, now Lord Privy Seal, has risen high in the king’s favour, but there is still more work to be done: there are foreign ambassadors to deal with, tensions between various court factions to navigate, conspiracies to stamp out, more marriages to arrange, and the moods of an increasingly temperamental and unpredictable Henry VIII to handle. Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII, has achieved what he set out to achieve – Anne, who has failed to give the king a male heir, is gone the four men he believes to have insulted his old master and mentor, Thomas Wolsey, have also been executed and Jane Seymour, formerly of Wolf Hall, has taken Anne’s place as Henry’s new queen. The novel opens in the aftermath of Anne Boleyn’s beheading. If you’re looking for a completely immersive reading experience, this is it – and for that reason, I would strongly recommend starting with the first book and reading the trilogy in order. It covers a relatively short period of time, from May 1536 to July 1540, which shows how much detail the book goes into. At almost 900 pages in my edition, it’s also the longest of the three books. The Mirror and the Light is, of course, the final part of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, completing the story begun in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.
After that, there always seemed to be other books that needed to be read first or that seemed more immediately appealing, so The Mirror and the Light has been languishing on the shelf until I decided to put it on this year’s 20 Books of Summer list. At last! I bought this book shortly after its release in March 2020 with every intention of reading it then, but with the start of the pandemic and our first lockdown, I got distracted and had to put it aside until I was able to give it the attention it deserved.
0 kommentar(er)
