With this trilogy, Mantel has redefined what the historical novel is capable of.
The plot here is shaped as meticulously as any thriller. The Mirror & the Light marks a triumphant end to a spellbinding story." - NPR "Breathtaking. "The Wolf Hall trilogy is probably the greatest historical fiction accomplishment of the past decade." - The New York Times Book Review " Wolf Hall, a decade ago, was a sensational character study that electrified an often-visited slice of history. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion, and courage.
But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to the breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on he has no great family to back him, no private army. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. " If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it? " England, May 1536.
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