The Mirror and the Light
Book Choice for April 2020: The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
**this review will contain Spoilers**
Hello again, and welcome to Slow Scholarship. Where we avoid our work and world events with 900-page tomes. And that was the right choice, for an April that was weird no matter where you were in the world. From early in the month, off and on for twenty days, I was enthralled with this wonderfully written book every time I picked it up, which I tried to do sparingly.
I suppose the writing style might not be for everyone, it makes the reader privy to pretty much every thought Thomas Cromwell has ever had, he even interrupts his own musings with fleeting memories from his past. Personally, I think this is the absolute strength of this book, as it accurately portrays the rambling of a real human mind, and how such a mind works as it grows older and looks back. It also minutely depicts how unrelenting it was to be someone with great power and responsibility—Thomas Cromwell had so many concerns that I found myself completely immersed and forgot all my own.
And the WRITING—all I can honestly say is “wow” (did you come here for high style or honesty?) As I mentioned in my last blog, this book was “woven.” I just don’t know how otherwise to describe how this sleight-of-hand was performed, it certainly wasn’t typed. It was dreamt, and transcribed by a ghost. It must have been channeled. But seriously, how does one learn to write like this? Mantel has inhabited Thomas Cromwell, and although I recognize that there was serious hard-work as pertains to the machinery of the story behind the curtain of lucid prose, you don’t see it. When TC begins his downfall, which I strongly suspected was coming (not from the book, from history) it happened as a single drop of water falling in a puddle. Or rather, the reader knows it will rain, that it is already raining, and is watching the puddles for the shattering of the smooth surface that must come…but instead, while the sound is happening, the drops don’t connect. The anticipated doesn’t happen, and one realizes that what you see with your eyes cannot be trusted, that some invisible force has ceased to function.
You are Thomas Cromwell, but you don’t yet know that you should fear. Then suddenly, you are the Reader again, and you start to suspect, but Thomas is able to brush away signs traced in the air. “Pack your bags and leave for the Continent, Thomas!” you want to tell him.
The sense of impending doom grows, but we’ve been with him for so long, you know there is nothing to do but follow him down. How did Mantel do it? How did she cause us to suffer along with her hero, while hardly revealing any clues at all? This book causes us to live the progression of a lingering doubt. Then there is a reprieve, and we dispel our own notions. You look back over your relationship with Henry… knowing, intellectually, that when he turns his back and loses interest, it is final. But your heart says, that is for other people, we have shared deep things, the hardest of times. My relationship with Henry is different, he has loved me. Well, he did love me. I know he is capable of orchestrating my death. He will tell others he hates me. But he loved me. He did. He did!
How very many minds traversed that course with shocked disbelief as they were led into the yard.
There is no way to do a good, thorough review of this book. At least not for me. It’s pure magic. There are a few very minor things; I’m not sure that the made-up daughter needed to be there, as her main purpose seemed to be an inability to be onstage, i.e, present for any of the action at all. That was probably done to underscore Thomas’s religious conundrums, however. As well, the book is not so much peppered with as laced with sex, it is the oil that keeps the pages turning of particularly the first third of the book; if that is something you have a problem with–the Tudor court certainly didn’t.
I’m not sure there are many enormous books one finishes and then wishes they could turn around and read again. There are also, probably, not many trilogies where the final book IS the consummation divine, but, here it is. In writing, in plotting, in pathos, it is everything you need. The writing is beautiful, intricate, stream-of consciousness. It’s so rich I don’t know how a body could sustain the effort required for it’s creation. It is the definition of passion. If Mantel won the Man Booker twice before, they are going to have to invent a new prize for this achievement.
As I cannot continue with mundane life without this portal to the 15th century, I’m back to bobbing along in the sea of uncertainty, as is everyone else at this time [I really reccommend you read The Mirror and the Light for distraction, have I said?] and as I can’t really move on from our relationship, I’m just taking it slow. I’ve tried to get back into my audiobook on Middlemarch, which I actually quite enjoy but it’s not working right now so I told it that I still need some space. However, that silly idea I had last month about reading all of Shakespeare’s English history plays was indeed silly, this is not the time to do it, they will require too much of me. As a compromise to myself I tried to interest my partner in watching The Tudors (that tv series from 10 years ago, did you know it ran for four seasons?) but it’s really not as charming in German, I don’t think we will watch it again.
In exciting quarantine news, I had an (internal) breakdown about wanting to buy an old chair, this crisis is ongoing and I will keep reporting on it’s development. It caused me to use my April audible credit on Empire of Things, a book I wrote a bit about a year ago on this blog, which purports to recount the entire history of the development of consumerism/consumer culture. The audiobook is 35 hours long. I certainly do not have time for that, and yet, perhaps drip-feeding myself some dispassionate non-fiction will provide the distraction from the distraction that I am looking for. I certainly do think about possessions a lot. I have seen a couple episodes of that lushly upholstered museum cabinet that is Downton Abbey recently after years of not watching…I’ve been stuck inside a lot, as we all have. Well, even if I never hear the whole audiobook, at least I don’t feel it’s a “to do.” It’s an option. More breaking news about the chair in future.
I just don’t know what to do with myself. I guess work on my thesis. I had one good week of writing and got a lot done. I seem to be rather a “sprinter” without the physique. But as for how to fill the evening hours…there is nothing concrete I can tell you. I’m trying to take walks. I believe I am actually progressing toward the pinnacle of “emptiness”, “boredom” and having no plans at which I have wished to arrive this whole quarantine. And now, it’s here, and quarantine is basically over, at least in Germany. We are all going to run out into the streets to do the very very important things we never thought twice about before. My book hangover will just have to run it’s course. Of one thing I am sure, it is in these times of seeking, and nothing being quite right, when the magic happens, and the next road opens up.