Bring Up the Bodies: The Booker Prize-winning and bestselling sequel to Wolf Hall, now a major TV series (The Wolf Hall Trilogy)

It's 1535 and Cromwell is Henry VIII's Chief Minister and Master Secretary. Thanks to the new Queen Anne and the Boleyn family, he has property, riches and power, but the King's inner circle will never let him forget his humble beginnings and are constantly circling him, waiting for a mistake that they can use to bring about his downfall. That downfall may be closer than Cromwell likes because Anne has yet to bear Henry the male heir he craves and faced with her jealousy, her demands and her acquisitiveness, his eye is beginning to wander towards the more sedate Jane Seymour. Conscious of what happened to his mentor Wolsey, Cromwell know that if he's to satisfy the king's desire while preserving his own position then he must turn on the Boleyns. But Cromwell's navigating a dangerous path and the Boleyns will not go quietly ... Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize winning sequel to the Booker Prize winning WOLF HALL is an equally thrilling, intelligent and utterly gripping account of Anne Boleyn's downfall and the impact on Cromwell. Mantel succeeds in taking a familiar story and making it feel both fresh and suspenseful again. As with WOLF HALL, Mantel peels away the different layers of Cromwell's character, revealing a man who has his vulnerabilities but is also capable of being utterly ruthless to both friends and enemies. A scene where he interrogates the hapless musician Smeaton is a masterclass in intimidation and cruelty as he takes the man apart and reduces him to nothing. I was also fascinated by Mantel's portrayal of Anne Boleyn who is a complicated character in her own right - capricious and vicious she's an intelligent woman who isn't as secure in her own position as she would like and feels constantly compelled to manipulate the men around her. Cromwell's observations of her are astute and the way they dance around each other is nail bitingly tense and I actually felt sorry for her as she goes towards her doom. There's a wonderful sense of period running throughout the piece and I liked the way Mantel weaves Cromwell's personal history into his reactions and plans. I also enjoyed the fact that the narrative is written in a less stylised and thus earlier to follow style than in WOLF HALL. All in all, it's a stunning read and I'm very much looking forward to the final book in the trilogy.

"Bring Up The Bodies", is - like its prequel ( "Wolf Hal"l ) - a superb piece of writing: original in its approach, gripping, deeply analytical of personality, motive and situation, brilliant and original in its descriptive as well as in its narrative style. Ms. Mantel raises the historical novel to a new level of excellence. Shortly before experiencing this superb brace of biographical exposés, I had read a representative of the genre written by one of its best known and most widely read authors. I was so bored by it that I had almost resolved never to venture into that area again. A chance meeting and a recommendation led to my reading Hilary Mantel, and the difference in quality taught me a lesson I am still enjoying. When "Bring Up The Bodies" ended, I felt genuinely sad. I wanted more. There was one small matter that caused me minor irritation: in "Wolf Hall", in order to create a sense of Thomas Cromwell's pervasiveness, his ubiquity, Ms. Mantel almost always refers to ( or identifies ) him with a personal pronoun rather than with his name. In that way the impression of Cromwell's thoughts and ideas, the thoughts behind the words, is cleverly conveyed. However, there were times when it proved a little confusing and even tiresome. A person ( other than Cromwell ) has just been referred to or quoted, and when the "he" of the next paragraph follows, one naturally assumes that the person now referred to or speaking is the same person....whereas, in fact, we have 'switched' to Cromwell. I questioned one or two other people who had read the book and their reaction was as mine. One had even ceased to read "Wolf Hall" because he found the device too irritating. I found, happily, that after the first few chapters I had adapted to this stylistic eccentricity, though occasionally it still proved a distraction. When I picked up "Bring Up The Bodies", I was prepared for it and thought myself more or less inured to it. To my surprise, it was almost absent! Whenever Cromwell was referred to or quoted, it was now, almost always, "he, Cromwell" or "him Cromwell" or "Cromwell himself", with some other variations. To be honest, this 'clarification' appeared so insistently that it began to feel awkward...affected; and at times it was actually unnecessary. I'm curious to know: were there so many adverse comments about this aspect of the style after "Wolf Hall" that Ms. Mantel decided to adjust it in the sequel? I doubt that. In fact, the revised ( 'corrected'? ) style was so obtrusively altered that I suspect the change ( no doubt accepted by the author - though maybe with reluctance ) was the work of a proof reader or sub-editor. I wonder if anyone can enlighten me. I can think of no other explanation for this change. None of this, however, spoiled my enjoyment of an outstandingly good book and I would recommend it without any serious qualification to any serious reader.

I should have known this wouldn't be the easiest book to read after struggling with Wolf Hall. I often only have time read a short section at a time and suspect that if I had the chance to read a bigger chunk at one sitting, there'd be less need to re-read the last few pages each time I pick the book up. Having said that, for a person like me who has a real interest in the Tudors, the plot's good and it seems to have been well researched so I will read it to the end and it'll probably be worth a second reading when I have more time, prior to ordering the third in the trilogy.

Der zweite Teil der Trilogie über Thomas Cromwell schildert vorwiegend den Untergang von Anne Boleyn, der zweiten Frau von Heinrich VIII. und welche Rolle Cromwell dabei spielte. Der Höhepunkt ist die Beschreibung Hilary Mantels auf 10 Seiten von der Hinrichtung Boleyns - der Scharfrichter kam eigens aus Calais. - Des Weiteren lernt mal viel über wichtige Persönlichkeiten des damaligen Englands und Heinrichs VIII. Bruch mit Rom kennen. Die Hinrichtung von Thomas More spiegelt den Höhepunkt diesen Bruchs wider. - Historischer, epischer Roman at its best!

I've seldom seen anything similar to the approving furor over Hilary Mantel's WOLF HALL, and if you had told me that a novel about Thomas Cromwell - most famously seen as a sleazy weasel attacking the saintly Thomas More in the movie A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS - could be fascinating and sexy, I would not have believed you. Mantel's writing, however, was utterly perfect as she twisted expectations by showing More as the intolerant, egocentric, venomous 16th-century anti-hero and Cromwell as a man who, in spite of battering, had become generous, loving, wise, reforming, amusing - calculating and vengeful (the vengeful doesn't really pop up until almost the end of WOLF HALL but it's definitely a trail worth following). So where do you go with one of the decade's most approved books, winner of the Man Booker Prize and other prestigious awards, which was so beautifully written that, while waiting for Part 2, many of us read it multiple times just to savor the ironies, the contrasts? You go on, as life does, and do Part 2. BRING UP THE BODIES gives Cromwell an altogether tougher task. Having become rich and elevated by serving Henry VIII in any way he desires, Cromwell now has to metaphorically enter Henry's bed to get rid of an inconvenient woman. Anne Boleyn has failed to give the King what she promised and that, in Tudor England, was fatal. The current Queen, from the first page of the book, has a metaphysical and literal sword hanging over her head. After the most notorious romance in western history, a stitched-up divorce ripping England from Holy Mother Church, all she can provide to the heir-hungry Henry is - another squalling daughter and a series of miscarriages. Just like her predecessor, the sorrowful Katherine of Aragon. So - Cromwell, the ultimate Fixer for his Machiavellian monarch, is going to have to fix this one as well. At what cost? As the book progressed, an image from the first page kept recurring to me - the falcon, stooping to the kill, bloodied and remorseless. Circa regna tonat , indeed. This story has been told and retold, and the same magic that infused Wolf Hall illuminates this catastrophic event with the same surprises, beautiful writing, subtle penetration, and black irony. Somehow, it seems like an entirely new story, one in which you know there will be bodies but still, for a time, it seems like this doom-laden tale could be rewritten, that it will not end in a stage full of corpses. There is magic in Mantel's prose: "Katherine was not without sin, but now her sins are taken off her. They are all heaped upon Anne; the shadow who flits after her, the woman draped in night. The old queen dwells in the radiance of God's presence, her dead infants swaddled at her feet, but Anne dwells in this sinful world below, stewed in her childbed sweat, in her soiled sheet. But her hands and feet are cold and her heart is like a stone." I waited two years for this book and it was worth the wait. If Mantel can sustain this dark, haunted, illuminating, ironic time-travel for a third book, I will be astounded - but perhaps, not surprised.

Es fantástico, quizá el primero me impresionó más pero este segundo es espectacular también. Los retratos psicológicos y el desarrollo de los acontecimientos estan descritos con una riqueza y precisión que pareces estar en el lugar que la autora describe, percibiendo los estados de ánimo de los personajes, los olores y temperatura de cada secuencia del relato. Hace creer al lector q lo q realmente ocurrió es lo que está leyendo. Recomiendo su lectura y quedo a la espera de la publicación de la tercera entrega de la trilogía.

A autora conferiu profunda dimensão humana a figuras históricas, que tão frequentemente são retratadas de forma estereotipada. Este livro e Wolf Hall, que o antecedeu, são ambos perfeitos tanto para os que amam história, quanto para quem busca boa literatura.

I'm quite knowledgable about the Tudor dynasty (not a scholar of the persiod, I have just read extensively about it over 30 years) and this is the first book that actually gives some understanding of Thomas Cromwell. His major acts, or "machinations", and there consequences have been well documented. But this man was so much more than popular fiction and light histories portray. Hilary Mantel's conversational style takes the reader right into Cromwell's thoughts - and whilst no-one can know another's thoughts, it seems that she has used her extensive research of clearly documented conversations, minutes of meetings etc, to create this inner dialogue. The effect is quite powerful. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and, to use a cliché, found it hard to put down! I'd like her to write abut Anne of Cleves next - another under-represented and mis-represented, but major player of the period.