No-one in Wolf Hall or Bring Up The Bodies says "prithee", no bodices are ripped, no liberties are taken with the historical record. But she has certainly reinvigorated an often tired and cliched genre. To say that Mantel has reinvented the historical novel is overstating it. It's a very good trick and well worth enjoying twice even if, inevitably, the follow-up doesn't have quite the same breathtaking originality as its predecessor. The good news for fans of Wolf Hall is that Bring Up The Bodies repeats the same trick with aplomb. Her 12th book, it catapulted her from the status of admired but often under-rated literary novelist to worldwide best-seller.Ī few found the book dense and unreadable most found its intimate portrait of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's minister and fixer and one of the most feared and disliked characters in English history, simply irresistible. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize in 2009. Can Bring Up The Bodies meet the high expectations of Mantel's fans, peers and literary critics? Continue reading the main story Related Storiesīooker Prize-winning author Hilary Mantel publishes the long-waited sequel to Wolf Hall this week.
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