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Hilary Mantel

Mirror & the Light: A Novel Hardcover – 10 March 2020

by Hilary Mantel (Author)

7,473 ratings

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If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it? England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith s son from Putney emerges from the spring s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry s regime to breaking point, Cromwell s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror and the Light. Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

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Product details

Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers (10 March 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 912 pages
ISBN-10 : 1443461083
ISBN-13 : 978-1443461085
Dimensions : 15.24 x 4.34 x 22.86 cm

Customer Reviews:
7,473 ratings

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About the Author

Hilary Mantel is the author of fourteen books, including A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, BEYOND BLACK, the memoir GIVING UP THE GHOST, and the short-story collection THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER. Her two most recent novels, WOLF HALL and its sequel BRING UP THE BODIES, have both been awarded the Man Booker Prize an unprecedented achievement.

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Richard Horsley

Worth the wait — another banger!

Reviewed in Australia on 15 April 2020

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The late, great scholar and champion of Thomas Cromwell, Geoffrey Elton, once declared that Thomas Cromwell was "unbiographable". The Thomas Cromwell industry has kicked up a notch under the impetus given by Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" trilogy (of which this is the third and last book). Recent non-fiction books have raked over Cromwell's doings in enormous detail, possibly proving Elton wrong — but possibly proving him right!

Be that as it may, Hilary Mantel has performed fabulously in combining the uneven historical record with her lively and sympathetic imagination to bring us a rounded, complex portrait of a rounded, complicated man. The range of matters that Cromwell took in hand is simply dizzying, and it is only recently that writers have come to consider him in all of them. (As an example, writers about his work in civil administration have tended to overlook his activities in the formation of an English church, its doctrines and practices, and vice versa.)

Mantel's Cromwell is stuffed full of diverse aptitudes - to a degree that would seem absurd if we did not have the historical records to show it. He may not be the villain of his pre-Elton reputation, but neither is he a saint. Particularly in this third book, we see examples of his illimitable ambition; his growing frankness in showing his impatience with those (no matter how exalted their position or their family) who, by their stupidity or their malice, get in the way of his plans; his lack of grace in asserting his rights over others (for example his neighbour at Austin Friars); his lack of grace in asserting his might over others' rights (for example his holding onto the Rolls House after relinquishing the post of Master of the Rolls); his apparently unquenchable appetite for all the trappings of wealth, especially land. These all give ammunition to old enemies, and create new ones. And the reader fears for Cromwell as (s)he reads—for there can surely be no reader who does not start the book already knowing how it will end: with Cromwell on the scaffold, attainted and executed for treason. For that matter, Cromwell himself is conscious of this risk even as his prince is elevating him to the greatest heights.

At the same time we see Cromwell protégés — men who owe their careers to him — grow into statesmen in their own right, step out from his shadow and (necessarily) begin to diverge from him.

Mantel's Cromwell does not show much emotion. But he has his obsessions and preoccupations beyond his work. He keeps returning, in his mind, to incidents and relationships from all eras of his life. He absorbs and revolves snatches of song, verses of poets both good (Thomas Wyatt) and bad (Thomas Howard), snippets of French, German, Latin, Italian. In Mantel's writing there is much humour, much that is poetic in all but form. There are descriptive passages ; there are telling accumulations of detail (that in anyone else's hands would come across as mere lists of the fruits of the author's research). There are visitations by the ghosts of Cromwell's past. And despite this variety the result is coherent and satisfying.

This may be the best book of the trilogy. Each of the other two won the Man Booker prize. I think she deserves to get the hat trick with this one.

7 people found this helpful

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Peter Hughes

A mixed but fitting finale

Reviewed in Australia on 29 August 2020

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It surprises me that many reveiwers praise Mantel's writing style because I find it often poor and just ok at best.
The author is often verbose, vague, confusing and unfocussed to no positive effect.

You often don't know what she's talking about, or who she's referring too, and it turns out to be of no importance anyway as you can easy flip through the many pages of rubbish. The 1st book in this trilogy is particularly poor writing imo. No 2 is much better and this 3rd is somewhere between the two.

Mantel's novels are of course saved by the compelling nature of the real life characters and actual history.
I agree with others that this 3rd novel is 40-50% too long but you can say the same about all of this trilogy.

This fault is easily fixed by flipping through Mantel's tripe and returning to the actual story.
It's a great story with fabulous characters that even Mantel's poor writing style was unable to ruin.

One person found this helpful

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Peter Anderson

THANK GOODNESS IT'S FINISHED!

Reviewed in Australia on 26 August 2020

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This is a fascinating trilogy, great historical fiction and story-telling.

However <i>The Mirror and the Light</I> is just too long! It could easily have been the same length as the first two books in the series and the story-telling would not have suffered. As it is, this last volume just becomes hard work, I struggled to get it finished.

A bit of a shame.

Peter
26 August 2020

2 people found this helpful

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amira

A Stunner

Reviewed in Australia on 18 March 2020

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This last volume is as good as the first two, something very hard to achieve. For skilled research, brilliant imagination and sheer hard work Mantel deserves the highest praise. I am sad to come to the end and to know a fourth volume isn't possible. Not a word out of place in a psychological masterpiece. Thank you Hilary Mantel for a wonderful experience.

4 people found this helpful

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Michael

Extraordinary prose

Reviewed in Australia on 5 November 2020

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Whether you like historical novels or not. Whether you have read the two prequels to this book or not. Whether you can cope with the length of the book or not. You have to be in awe of the soaring prose that Hilary Mantel deploys. Some of it is just mesmerising. A must read book.

One person found this helpful

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P. Gunning

Spellbinding

Reviewed in Australia on 10 April 2020

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Anyone who has read the preceding books will have been waiting for this. Mantel is a goddess of words, a weaver of tales, a mistress of magic. Because of her, Cromwell lives in me forever. With gratitude I recommend this to lovers of language and story.

2 people found this helpful

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The Captain

Brilliant

Reviewed in Australia on 13 April 2020

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Although there are lapses in the prose, especially around the time of Cromwell’s illness, the plot is carried by some of this author’s best writing. This is a wonderful read...and a fitting finale to a magnificent achievement.

3 people found this helpful

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Geraldine

Outstanding achievement.

Reviewed in Australia on 21 January 2021

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While no book is perfect the effort, scholarship, attention to detail, the precise and controlled pace and use of language justify this rating. All three books are to be relished slowly and afforded the same grace as that with which they were written.

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Amazon Customer

Started well and ended well, but...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 March 2020

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I think the first two books in the trilogy are among the best I have ever read in my life so I was really excited to receive the long awaited third instalment. It started off well and I was really immersed and then... Meh. It all just started to feel a bit repetitive. There were so many references to or repetitions of stories and events covered in the first two books that it started to become boring. I was reading it thinking yes, I remember that from last time, can we skip this and get on to something new please? Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty in the book that was new, there was just far too much regurgitation of the old alongside it. The ending was admittedly magnificent though. So there’s that.

Also, Cromwell seemed different in this book. I am not even sure I can articulate how, just that the character somehow felt different, not the same old familiar Cromwell from the first two books.

In addition, some of the characters who loomed larger in the first two books were minor players in this novel, which was a little disappointing as I had hoped to see more of them and how they might react to the changing events. I realise the author had to tell the story through the eyes of characters close to events and that she didn’t always have a free hand, but I still felt disappointed that some of the central characters from the first two novels barely featured and that I didn’t really get any insight into what they might have felt or thought.

The writing was beautiful and I cannot deny the author’s writing talent or the amount of historical research that went into producing such a faithful recreation of the period. However, I have just been left feeling a little underwhelmed at the end of the day. This could be my fault for perhaps expecting too much from the book, or maybe I unconsciously had my own opinion of what I expected to read in the novel and because the result is different to that I am unjustifiably feeling disappointed in it? I don’t know to be honest. I just didn’t feel the burning love for this book that I did for the others in the trilogy. Maybe I will revisit it next year and go cover to cover again and change my opinion?

However, at the moment I feel that while it is a very good book it didn’t, for me, reach the same lofty heights as its predecessors. I hate to write that because I wanted to adore it, but I didn’t and that’s that.

95 people found this helpful

The Earnest Critic

The maestro returns : Once the queen's head is severed he walks away

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 March 2020

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is the attention-catching first line of Mantel's concluding novel in her award-winning trilogy. I've just started listening to this on audible. I couldn't wait for the physical version to arrive, so have paid twice but don't care it will be worth it. I am absolutely loving it. Within a very short time we are introduced to many familiar characters. But, the king is kept at a distance, Cromwell wondering, hesitantly, how he should 'greet a man who just killed his wife.' The tensions that will end Cromwell's life are indicated even in this first chapter. A novel to lose yourself in written by what must be Britain's greatest living writer. Highly recommend. (I will leave a full review once I finish it Saturday as it's 37 hours / 1000 pages long.)

73 people found this helpful

E. Rowe

If you can't google a family tree then don't buy the kindle version

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 March 2020

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It is a 800 plus page book so reading this on the kindle is very handy. The print version is large format as it is newly published and I hate that size. The people giving the book a low star rating simple because the family tree is eligible is annoying. Judge the book, the writing. Just simply state it as a flaw or annoyance on the kindle. Google the family tree! Having read the other books I have some idea of the players at this stage. Anyway seeing as rating books here has nothing to do with judging writing I'm going to give the kindle version a five star rating because having a 800 page book on a tiny electronic device is witchcraft of some sort.

72 people found this helpful

Annik Lamotte

Brilliant stuff in a league of its own

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 March 2020

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I hated Wolf Hall until I'd read it twice, then I loved it; after that I devoured the follow-up, Bring Up the Bodies. I have just read The Mirror and The Light in three days, whilst suffering from a nasty debilitating virus, and when I closed the last page and put it down, I said to myself "It's a masterpiece."

The secret to reading a Mantel "Cromwell" novel is to suspend all rules of normal fiction-writing and bask in the flow. But don't apply that technique to her dreadful early work, A Place of Greater Safety, which I think is one of the most self-indulgent books I've ever valiantly ploughed through and thoroughly disliked. (A case of "twice as good at half the length" if ever there was one.) She has come a long, long way since then, and emerged on the side of the angels.

I shall give myself a few days' rest and then read "Mirror" entirely for the prose rather than the structure of the story, and let myself wallow in some of the sublime writing and insights. Of course there are tedious or confusing passages - nothing is perfect - but this is pretty damned brilliant and in a class of its own. Well worth waiting for...

62 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Worth it's weight in gold!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 March 2020

Verified Purchase

I have long anticipated this release and the writing and characterisation is even better than I remember. At this stage I have yet to finish this wonderful book so I will focus on responding to two negative reviews that have already been written neither of which should have reflected the rating for this important work.

1. Family trees..... E-readers have lower resolution so all books with maps, diagrams and family trees suffer from poor clarity of these items. If the work can withstand this then I buy it. I often download a book sample to see first. In this case as it invariably is, the book is worth reading regardless. If the illustrations need scrutinised then you can download a copy of the book into the kindle applicator on your PC, browser, or tablet. The family trees are perfectly viewable on them as they are on my Kindle Voyage.

2. Price. Cheaper is better however if you cannot wait for the price to fall on release of the paperback then you have a choice of the hardback or the ebook (50p more at the time of writing). I chose ebook this time and feel that launch price is worth paying for a book this good, from an author of such skill. The author and publisher deserve to be rewarded for their work. I am grateful for being given the chance to revisit the setting and the characters.

I intend to update this review on completing the book.

44 people found this helpful

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Mirror & the Light: A Novel Hardcover – 10 March 2020

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