Book Review: The Mirror & the Light

Well, I finally finished it. 754 pages. Over 7 weeks. What a slog of a read. But it was well worth it. Hilary Mantell's third novel in the trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII is the best of the three. It's been several years since I read the second, "Bringing Up the Bodies" and before that, "Wolf Hall", the first. All three were terribly long in pages, and all three took a while to read, though this last one took the longest.

The main reason it took me so long, besides being a slow reader in the first place, is the way the author writes. Not only does she use language that is similar, but not exactly the same, as that was used in dialogue in the 1500s in Tudor England, but she also has a distinctive way of writing dialogue. Whenever she was writing dialogue that involved Cromwell, his name was not used. In fact, his name was often omitted in the prose. She used the pronoun "he". I had to pay attention or I would find myself going back over sentences to see who was talking to whom. But after about 400 pages, I began to get the hang of it. 

Another thing that made it slow going was that most of the characters in the story had more than one name that would be used. Charles Brandon was the Duke of Suffolk, while Thomas Howard was the Duke of Norfolk. And many of the women were referred to similarly, but then also as the wife or daughter of some dual-named male. Fortunately, there was a six and a half page "cast of characters" at the beginning of the book that I found myself using repeatedly until about page 700.

The best part of the story was the last 50-60 pages when Cromwell was taken to the Tower of London and interrogated before he was beheaded in July 1540. The dialogue between Cromwell and his interrogators for the king was the best writing of the novel. Sometimes serious and threatening, sometimes sarcastic and even a little humorous, I found the give and take spell-binding.

I also took the time to look up some of my notes and read about a little more background about some of the characters and certain subjects and topics as well as some words I didn't know. 

 As you can see I didn't do too bad; just 3 sides of two 3x5 cards. Sometimes I use three or four cards for much smaller books. One thing I noted and went off to read more was after about two-thirds of the way through, I began to notice a similarity between Henry VIII and our current President. I was wondering if I was the only one to notice that. So I Googled it and found that...well, let's just say you might want to Google it yourself.

A final note: You don't have to read the first two to enjoy this third volume, but it is well worth it to read them if you have the time ( and who doesn't these days!).