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Publication Date: May 8, 2012
The sequel to Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn
Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.
At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head...
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In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII’s court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king’s favor and ascend to the heights of political power England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death. ...
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It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden--and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter. In the swells of revolution, they each taste the addictive delights of power, and the price that must be paid for it. Hilary Mantel has written nine novels including, most recently, Beyond Black and a highly acclaimed memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. She lives with her husband in England. It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden—and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter. In the swells of revolution, they each taste the addictive delights of power, and the price that must be paid for it. "Mantel's writing is so exact and brilliant that, in itself, it seems an act of survival, even redemption."— Joan Acocella, The New Yorker "Brilliant, edgy historical fiction that captures the whiplash flux of the French Revolution with crisp immediacy on the page."— The Seattle Times "The turmoil of the French Revolution provides the setting for Mantel's American debut, an encompassing historical novel. The principal protagonists—Robespierre, Desmoulins, and Danton—are portrayed in depth as real people, from their troubled childhoods through their downfalls. Interspersed with their stories are the lesser dramas being enacted in this turbulent era, including the loves, rivalries, successes, and despair of the many participants. The author does a commendable job of presenting the metamorphosis of the revolution from its tenuous, fledgling state to the bloodbath of the Reign of Terror, which ultimately turned on its own. . . . this novel is for serious readers of the genre."—Maria A. Perez-Stable, Western Michigan University Libraries, Kalamazoo, Library Journal "An epic of extraordinary detail and depth . . . [it] moves beyond the realm of an absorbing yarn into the arena of a literary masterpiece."—Booklist "British novelist Mantel weighs in with her American debut: a massively impressive, painstakingly detailed saga of the French Revolution as its leaders lived it. Citizens Danton, Desmoulins, and Robespierre are the primary figures in this historical epic, as each moves from provincial beginnings to Paris and a larger-than-life status in the heady days of revolutionary fervor and terrible excess. Lawyers all, their inclinations and positions allow them to step into roles for which they are well-suited: Danton as the manly, vainglorious hero, as committed and bold as he is self-interested; Robespierre as the tireless conscience of the Revolution, reluctant to accept the power thrust upon him but with an ascetic temperament that brooks no compromises with lesser mortals when he does; and Desmoulins, the go-between, flamboyant and inflammatory, devoted to his friends and sexually ambivalent. Each man moves to his separate but equal destiny through a rich field of characters and images, with wives and family members, sans-culottes and royalty, friends and supporters all revealed in telling detail. The intricacies of political maneuvering in a time of social upheaval are handled with sensitivity and wonderful dexterity, with the final crack in the revolutionary facade that brought Robespierre to turn his allies over to the executioners—in effect destroying all they had struggled together to build—being evident long before it becomes visible. Re-creating the fullness of history with its wealth of human faces and failings, this is a lively, engrossing tale of power, glory, and despair."—Kirkus Reviews "'History is fiction,' Robespierre observes at one point during British writer Mantel's monumental fictive account of the French Revolution, her first work to appear in this country. In her hands, it is a spellbinding read. Mantel recounts the events between the fall of the ancien regime and the peak of the Terror as seen through the eyes of the three protagonists—Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins—and a huge cast of supporting characters (including brief appearances by the scrofulous Marat). The three revolutionaries, longtime acquaintances, spend their days scheming and fighting for a corruption-free French Republic, but their definitions of 'corrupt' are as different as the men themselves. Robespierre is the fulcrum. Rigidly puritanical, he is able to strike terror into the most stalwart of hearts, and his implacable progress towards his goal makes him the most formidable figure of the age. As the lusty, likable and ultimately more democratic Danton observes, it is impossible to hurt anyone who enjoys nothing. The feckless, charming Camille Desmoulins, loved by all but respected by few, dances between the two, writing incendiary articles to keep the flames of revolt alive. Mantel makes use of diaries, letters, transcripts and her own creative imagination to create vivid portraits of the three men, their families, friends and the character of their everyday lives. Her gift is such that we hang on to every word, following bewildering arguments and Byzantine subplots with eager anticipation. This is historical fiction of the first order."—Publishers Weekly ...
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A New York Times Book ReviewNotable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
In her acclaimed novel, Hilary Mantel tells of the fated convergence of Ireland and England. As belief wrestles knowledge and science wrestles song, so The Giant, O'Brien calls to us from a fork in the road as a tale of time, and a timeless tale. Hilary Mantel's novels include the Orange Prize-shortlisted Beyond Black and A Place of Greater Safety. She lives in England. London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. Among them is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in the old myths. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. He has, he soon finds, come to die. His opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter. Hunter lusts after the Giant's corpse, a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge. In her acclaimed novel, Hilary Mantel tells of the fated convergence of two worlds: Ireland and England, poetry and science. As belief wrestles knowledge, so the novel calls from a fork in the road. It is a tale of its time, a timeless tale. "Hilary Mantel has felt herself into the poetics of history with singular intensity. A brilliant pastiche, drawing on Swift and Joyce, deploying all the tricks of understatement and of what the great Russian formalist Shklovsky called 'making it strange,' it triumphantly justifies and reanimates these well-worn methods."—John Bayley, The New York Review of Books "Mantel's new novel is a bizarre and morbid account of the meeting of art and science. In 1782, Irish giant Charles O'Brien arrives in London with an agent, an entourage, and a willingness to exploit himself for financial gain. He is a learned man, knowledgeable in myths and stories, yet it is his size that attracts the interest of John Hunter, surgeon, scientist, and collector of biological and medical oddities. Hunter is determined to add the Giant to his collection and bides his time until the Giant's declining health and financial ruin signal the end of his life. Hunter's calculated efforts to acquire O'Brien and the willingness of the Giant's associates to barter for his bones are chilling depictions of greed and selfishness. Mantel tells a classic tale, rich with the sights, sounds, and smells of 18th-century London."—Dianna Moeller, Lacey, Washington, Library Journal "The title character in Mantel's grimly lyrical latest novel is in flight from a number of horrors. He arrives in London in 1782, having fled the famine and violence that is devastating his native Ireland. He is fleeing as well his despairing conviction that the past of the Irish people, represented by a vast reservoir of myths and historical narratives, is vanishing as those charged with remembering that glorious past die off. O'Brien, by the standards of his day a giant, has allowed himself to be convinced by a none-too-bright promoter that he can make a fortune by allowing himself to be exhibited in London ('like the sea and gallows. It refuses none'). Swiftly, he finds one more fury to flee, this time in the person of John Hunter, a premier anatomist who uses grave robbers to supply his seemingly insatiable need for corpses to dissect. Hunter, having heard of O'Brien, becomes obsessed with the idea of possessing the giant's bones for his museum of anatomical oddities. Once again, Mantel uses characters to probe at larger truths—here, O'Brien, who is a great taleteller, a repository of Ireland's imaginative past, seems to represent a belief in the redemptive power of art and wonder, besieged by the 18th-century's ferocious scientific rationalism: Hunter wants desperately to understand what life is, but can only pursue it by destroying it. O'Brien enjoys a floating fame, falls on hard times, and ends up in a squalid freak show. Sickening, he's aware that his nemesis Hunter is feverishly attempting to buy the rights to his corpse from the show's owner. Dying, he dreams of his life as it might have been, if he had been a poet. As it is, it seems certain that 'stories could not save him.' Distinguished by a deft use of voices (from O'Brien's soaring lyricism and earthy humor to Hunter's desiccated musings) and by a vivid portrait of the feculent underside of London: a fresh, moving meditation on the sources of wonder and the dangers of a depraved rationalism."—Kirkus Reviews "The most engaging moments in Mantel's intriguing new novel occur when the uneducated Irish characters who make up the loutish retinue of The Giant, O'Brien converse. Perfectly imagining the vocabulary and inflections of Irish peasants whose stark ignorance leaves them agape at the wonders of 1782 London, Mantel produces dialogue that is at once credible and funny. Here, as in many of her novels, cultures collide, and individual human beings suffer as a consequence. Taking as her inspiration the 18th-century Irish giant Charles Byrnes, whose bones are still on exhibit in a London museum, Mantel has imagined the fate of the man, who leaves the dire poverty and scorched earth of the Irish countryside and comes to London entertaining grandiose fantasies of riches and respect, but who encounters disillusionment and his own mortality instead. In counterpoint to the giant, who lives in Ireland's glorious past, spinning folktales and fables to earn his bread, another emigre to London, Scottish surgeon James Hunter (also a real figure), is obsessed with the 'modern' lure of scientific research, for which he needs bodies. Generally dependent on grave robbers for his corpses, Hunter realizes that the giant is moribund, and plots to win the cadaver. Mantel makes the most of the contrast between the steel-willed, splenetic Hunter and the gentle giant, a hedgerow scholar whose generous nature and naivete are his undoing. Her picture of late-18th-century London is brilliant—especially the gloom, filth and squalor in which the lower class exists, ruled by prejudice, superstition and strong drink. She also hits home with witty comments about the national characteristics of the English and the Irish."—Publishers Weekly ...
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A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Colette and Alison are unlikely cohorts: one a shy, drab beanpole of an assistant, the other a charismatic, corpulent psychic whose connection to the spiritual world torments her. When they meet at a fair, Alison invites Colette at once to join her on the road as her personal assistant and companion. Troubles spiral out of control when the pair moves to a suburban wasteland in what was once the English countryside. It is not long before the place beyond black threatens to uproot their lives forever. This is Hilary Mantel at her finest--insightful, darkly comic, unorthodox, and thrilling to read. Hilary Mantel's major novels include A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, and Eight Months on Ghazzah Street. Her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, drew rave reviews and brought new readers to her dark genius. Mantel lives with her husband in England. A New York Times Notable Book A Newsday Best Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Orange Prize A paragon of efficiency, well-schooled in the mundane tasks of an average existence, Colette took the next natural step after finishing secretarial school—marrying a man who would do just fine. After a sobering do-it-yourself divorce, Colette, for this first time, is at a loss as to what to do next. Convinced that she deserves a life-affirming revelation, she strays into the world of psychics and clairvoyants, the realm of tarot cards and crystal balls, hungry for a whisper to set her off in the right direction. At a psychic fair in Windsor she sneaks into Alison's show. Alison, beleaguered by spirits since early childhood, lives in a different kind of solitude. She can never escape the dead who speak to her, and the physical pain of their broken bodies—least of all the constant presence of Morris, her low-life spiritual guide. An expansive on stage—in both the physical and the charismatic sense—Alison feels a bond with Colette almost instantly, and invites her to become her personal assistant. A dark, odd, unsettling, yet often amusing novel, Beyond Black follows the pair as they create a new life together, both women struggling to retain control in the face of the material and metaphysical pressures of the modern world. When they move to an industrial wasteland in the ravished English countryside and take in a vagrant who also hears voices (but of a different kind), Alison’s connections to the place beyond black converge with the scrutiny of her neighbors, threatening to uproot her life completely. With her trademark wit and keen eye for humanity's eccentrics, Hilary Mantel brings us an irresistible account of the complications of lives at the edge of the spirit world—and beyond. "Funny and harrowing . . . Beyond Black feels like a great, gleeful binge, a wallow in the not-good-for-you riches of this writer's extraordinarily vivid, violent imagination . . . Flannery O'Connor, herself no mean connoisseur of the grotesque, once wrote: 'All comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death.' That's precisely the sort of mortal urgency you feel in Mantel's extravagant similes and bursting metaphors. This is, I think, a great comic novel. Hilary Mantel's humor, like Flannery O'Connor's, is so far beyond black it becomes a kind of light."—Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review (cover review) "Original and deeply dark . . . The author tries hard to push herself past the stark grimness of the world she describes and take the reader somewhere new and compelling . . . Beyond Black is a daring and extravagant book, filled with as much wit as darkness . . . Readers of fiction . . . long for writers to pull fully formed characters from the air and animate them, to dredge up entire histories and futures with a conjurer's panache. They will be satisfied by Hilary Mantel's abilities to perform these feats, and to imbue her writing with a unique combination of exhilaration and dread. With Beyond Black, she shows us how fiction can lift us into the extraordinary."—Meg Wolitzer, The Washington Post Book World "A darkly funny novel about the odd relationships formed among the living and the dead. Alison Hart, nearing 40, overweight and happily single, is a spiritual seer by trade. She reads palms and tarot cards; in villages throughout England, she performs in front of packed crowds, her stage act a combination of fortune-telling and 'communications' with the other side. In an age of celebrity deaths and terrorist attacks, Alison's authentic spiritual gifts are highly prized, but her personal life is in shambles, physically, emotionally, and financially. Help arrives in the form of Colette, a recently divorced, no-nonsense professional, who sees Alison's predicament as an opportunity to reinvent both women's lives. Obstacles to Colette's ambitious plans include nosy neighbors, competing psychics, even adversaries from beyond—especially a gang of menacing thugs from Alison's childhood. A contemporary ghost story told with humor and heart."—James Klise, Booklist "Unpleasant and meddling dead people litter the landscape around a very sweet medium whose past would frighten anyone to death. The mark of a great novelist may be the ability to take you where you truly don't want to go. If so, Mantel is the real goods. Who, without some sort of artistic seduction, would willingly go into the mind of an obese English psychic whose tortured childhood makes the worst of Dickens look like a cakewalk? Mantel's lure into this dark trip is the carefully won charm of psychic Alison 'Al' Hart, a sunny-tempered 'sensitive' who has had to tolerate the constant presence underfoot of Morris, her repulsive spirit guide. Morris, who is linked to Al's evil childhood surroundings, hangs around her dressing room, invisible to the 'insensitive' as Alison works the crummy theaters and meeting halls where she and her colleagues bring whitewashed glimpses of the postmortem other side (nobody wants to hear how confused and unhappy the dead really are) to England's lower middle classes. In the years since the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet brought unimagined looniness onto the world scene, Al has benefited from the no-nonsense assistance of Colette, an erstwhile events manager in flight from a loveless marriage. Colette's keen business sense has put Al's finances in such order that there is enough money for the odd couple to buy the largest model of house in a new subdivision that is so devoid of charm or past that Morris, very much a city lad when he was alive, finally leaves the two women alone for a period of peace. Relative peace. Alison is never without reminders of not just her special abilities but of the incidents in her childhood that scarred her brutally, inside and out. Voices of the dead turn up on Al's taped memoirs, and then her old torturers turn up in the subdivision, following orders from Lucifer. Superbly odd, but still superb."—Kirkus Reviews "Instead of celebrating the mystical side of 'sensitives,' the people who travel England's contemporary psychic 'fayre' circuit, Mantel concentrates on the potential banality of spiritualism in her latest novel, a no-nonsense exploration of the world of public and private clairvoyance. Co...
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