The inventiveness of Mantel’s language is the chief draw here; the plot, as such, will engage only the most determined of...
Second in Mantel’s trilogy charting the Machiavellian trajectory of Thomas Cromwell.
The Booker award-winning first volume, Wolf Hall (2009), ended before the titular residence, that of Jane Seymour’s family, figured significantly in the life of King Henry VIII. Seeing through Cromwell’s eyes, a point of view she has thoroughly assimilated, Mantel approaches the major events slantwise, as Cromwell, charged with the practical details of managing Henry’s political and religious agendas, might have. We rejoin the characters as the king’s thousand-day marriage to Anne Boleyn is well along. Princess Elizabeth is a toddler, the exiled Queen Katherine is dying, and Henry’s disinherited daughter Princess Mary is under house arrest. As Master Secretary, Cromwell, while managing his own growing fortune, is always on call to put out fires at the court of the mercurial Henry (who, even for a king, is the ultimate Bad Boss). The English people, not to mention much of Europe, have never accepted Henry’s second marriage as valid, and Anne’s upstart relatives are annoying some of Britain’s more entrenched nobility with their arrogance and preening. Anne has failed to produce a son, and despite Cromwell’s efforts to warn her (the two were once allies of a sort), she refuses to alter her flamboyant behavior, even as Henry is increasingly beguiled by Jane Seymour’s contrasting (some would say calculated) modesty. Cromwell, a key player in the annulment of Henry’s first marriage, must now find a pretext for the dismantling of a second. Once he begins interrogating, with threats of torture, Anne’s male retainers to gather evidence of her adulteries, Mantel has a difficult challenge in keeping up our sympathy for Cromwell. She succeeds, mostly by portraying Cromwell as acutely aware that one misstep could land “him, Cromwell” on the scaffold as well. That misstep will happen, but not in this book.
The inventiveness of Mantel’s language is the chief draw here; the plot, as such, will engage only the most determined of Tudor enthusiasts.Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9003-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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Swords, shields, mud and blood. Great stuff, as always, from the master.
Cornwell’s tough medieval saga continues after King Alfred’s realm is reduced to one swamp and a handful of believers.
Uhtred of Begganburg, Northumbrian narrator of Cornwell’s series opener, The Last Kingdom (2005), returns to court from his triumph at the battle of Cynuit to find that his rightful glory has been usurped by his weasely nemesis, Odda the Younger. Pious King Alfred is always ready to believe the worst of the pagan Uhtred, who should have skipped rest and recovery at home with beautiful wife Mildrith—now a serious whiner—and gone straight to His Majesty to take credit for the death of the Danish warrior Ubba. Too late. The bad career move puts Uhtred way outside the sanctimonious Saxon power circle, to the disappointment of the increasingly religious Mildrith. Just as he is about to perish from boredom on his farm, Uhtred’s old pal Leofric reappears, and the two chums hatch a plan to go plundering in the West, disguised as Vikings. On their excellent adventure, the two score copious loot and Uhtred rescues beautiful Celtic queen Iseult, who is also a bit of a witch. The loot comes in handy when Uhtred wants to settle Mildrith’s family debt to the rapacious church, but the only way he can square things with Alfred is by winning a battle with Steapa, a stupendously strong, extra-large warrior. In the middle of the contest, Vikings spring a surprise attack and the Saxons are badly beaten. The king and his family flee, taking refuge in a bog inhabited by gloomy fishermen loyal to no one. A little magic and a formidable battle begin to reverse the bad fortune.
Swords, shields, mud and blood. Great stuff, as always, from the master.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-078712-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
Brawny and urgent, it’s unmistakably Amis, though without the gimmickry of Time's Arrow (1991).
Can love survive against that most hellish of backdrops, the Nazi concentration camp? It's a question that Amis (Lionel Asbo, 2012, etc.) probes in his latest novel, an indelible and unsentimental exploration of the depths of the human soul.
Opening in August 1942, the book's events are narrated from the viewpoints of three distinct characters. Arctic-eyed Golo Thomsen, a German officer, looks every bit the Aryan ideal, ensuring him a lusty welcome in beds across the Reich. He also happens to be the nephew of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, though his personal views regarding the Fuhrer's campaign are a good deal more opaque. Paul Doll is the queasily named camp commandant, a doltish yet wily drunkard whose cool wife, Hannah, has caught Thomsen's eye. As for Szmul, back in Poland he was a tender husband and father. In the camp, he is a member of the Sonderkommando, forced to herd fellow inmates into the gas chambers and dispose of their bodies. It’s Szmul who recalls a fable about a king who commissioned a magic mirror that reflected one’s soul. Nobody in the kingdom could look at it for 60 seconds without turning away. The camp, he says, is that mirror. Only you can’t turn away. As Thomsen contrives to woo Hannah, word reaches the Officers’ Club that German forces are surrounded at Stalingrad. Doll becomes increasingly paranoid and Szmul, a bearer of perilous Nazi secrets, strives to find a way to reclaim his life. With malice rampant, absurdity lurks in the shadows, drawn out by twisted details like bureaucratic euphemisms or the fact that Jews are made to pay for their own tickets aboard the trains bringing them to the camp.
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-35349-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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