I would have to consider myself fortunate that I decided to pick up Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf hall” from the library shelf on that summer day in 2009. I distinctly remember pulling out the book, the hard-bound edition, a considerably thick volume, with Mantels’ profile on the back cover – that cherubic, aquiline face with large, magnetic azure blue eyes – and leafing through its pages, reading a few lines here and there, as any seasoned reader is bound to do when they encounter a new author. I wasn’t particularly impressed with what I glanced at. The sentences seemed taut, short, and sounded strange in a way I couldn’t fathom at that time. I walked up and down several aisles browsing, before reaching the spot again; “Wolf hall” was luring me, but I held back, hesitant about investing my time in the book, in an author I hadn’t read anything of previously. I had no frame of reference, had no idea what kind of writer she was. The booker prize was still a few months away. From the cover, it was evident the book was about Oliver Cromwell, set in the period of Henry VIII, the colorful and controversial English monarch. I was definitely interested in that period, about Henry’s queens – their tragic fates – and I knew Cromwell himself was beheaded after a meteoric rise in the royal hierarchy during the King’s reign. History books flag Cromwell as a schemer, a manipulator, a cunning man, and Mantel’s “Wolf hall” promised to tell the story of this man from his perspective. And there were two more volumes to come. I made the decision and checked the book out from the library.
It took me a couple of months to read the book, not because it was a difficult read ( which it is until the reader gets used to Mantel’s style) but because I kept revisiting pages and paragraphs and sentences and words for its power and beauty, the controlled writing, the attractive ( and sometimes distracting) first-person narrative and the masterful command of the language that lit up the scene in the mind’s eye, and the prose itself liberally sprinkled, embroidered and embellished with sumptuous use of pronouns, semicolons, colons, and lavish verbs and nouns. The first paragraph, when read with attention, shakes the reader into wakefulness – young Cromwell is beaten, kicked, and cursed by his drunken father – a blacksmith and the boy lies on the ground writhing with pain in the abdomen with bleeding cuts to his face, nauseous, defiant, and decides, right then and there that it is time run away from home. Mantel evokes all this physical pain, emotional resentment, and firm resolution in five sentences: meticulously crafted, direct, and visually tactile – a hallmark of Mantel’s observant and crafted prose.
From 2009 to 2020, Mantel published the three volumes of the Cromwell trilogy. She had researched the subject for five years before she even put pen to paper, which means, it took nearly two decades to complete the trilogy. Every page is a testimony of her loving labor. Historians, astonished at the factual accuracy; literary critics, at the use of language, and readers, from all walks of life, drawn into the story like a spider sucking its prey into its web. I had joined the Mantel cult by the time I finished Wolf hall. In the eleven years between “Wolf hall” and “The mirror & the light” – the third volume, I collected all her books, and read them in the sequence it was published. Her work became my refuge, her prose my guiding light – a perfection to aspire for. The Cromwell books sold more than five million copies worldwide, translated into forty-one languages, and it propelled Mantel to the center stage of writers.
Prior to the Cromwell trilogy, Mantel’s works had a very eclectic readership. Not many knew her. The reason is that her stories are often troubled, and explored the dark and uncomfortable regions of human behavior and actions. These are not books you could read on a plane, or pass your Sunday with. They need attention. Furthermore, the characters in her novels, the principal ones, at least, are often spiteful, sometimes malicious ( as in the case of “The black), and always living at the edge. The relationships between her characters are complex and intricate – just as it is in life – and the reader has to carefully follow the development of the story. Her chiseled prose ensured that readers who engaged with her writing vibrated to the music she wished to create. It is not easy reading Mantel’s prose, I confess. It takes time, and at least a couple of books, to get used to the cadence of her sentences, the imaginative use of semicolons ( she loved semicolons), her choice of words, and the striking metaphors. Mantel believed a reader is intelligent and sensitive and therefore did nothing to dilute the rigor of her prose and simplify the narrative arc of her story. You cannot read a mantel book lightly; like Proust, she packs so much detail in a single paragraph, a few sentences, that a reader often has to pause, absorb, reflect and allow her words to evoke the image and soak in it. You have to read her with care, and love, and anyone who can do it, will come out of the experience refreshed and clear.
In 2003, Mantel wrote her memoir “ Giving up the ghost”. It is an extraordinary piece of autobiographical writing in which she traces her troubled childhood, terrible migraines that distorted her vision, her persistent ill-health that unsent undiagnosed for years and which later turned out to be a serious condition ( endometriosis, a rare disease ) that left her childless and obese and dependent on pain killers, and her acute sense of observation that noticed everything around her carefully and vividly. At the age of seven or eight, Hilary is certain she saw a ghost in her backyard, not a fiction of her imagination; but really, in material form and shape. With her Irish- catholic upbringing, the young Hilary believed that this vision was a punishment for her behavioral intransigences, and was convinced that what we normally perceive as reality is just a facade, a suitable convenience, behind which there lurks a shadowy world, a place where things don’t quite add up as we think it should. I highly recommend that anyone new to mantel’s work should read this memoir first. Not only is it a masterpiece of controlled objective writing, but it is a window to Mantel’s works.
Hilary mantel’s first novel is about the French Revolution “ A place of greater safety”. It is set in the period between 1789 – 1795. She wrote this in 1975 when she was in her late twenties while living in Botswana with her husband, a geologist. The book was rejected by the publisher. It was published in 1992, as her fourth novel. I love “A place of greater safety”. In it, one can see the birth of Hilary Mantel as a writer of great power and clarity. All the characteristics of her later works are present in this novel: the flair for dialogue, the rich descriptions of place and people, and the psychological insights. More importantly, this book demonstrates Hilary’s eye for detail – something she was very particular about in whatever she wrote. She never wrote anything that didn’t have evidence to support it. Imagination can only fill up gaps, but shouldn’t replace fact. In 2017, in the prestigious BBC’s Reith lectures, Hilary laid out her philosophy for writing historical fiction She said: “As soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone, and you will see what I mean. Once we can no longer speak for ourselves, we are interpreted. When we remember — as psychologists so often tell us — we don’t reproduce the past, we create it”. ( The Reith lectures are available on YouTube, Spotify, and other channels. If you wish to listen to meaningful talks from some of the most insightful minds in modern times, on subjects that concern human welfare, this is the place to go. Listen to the five Reith lectures by Hilary mantel on the art of writing fiction – it’s free)
Hilary started writing when she was twenty-two. Unlike other great writers, who produce some of their best work in the early years and then begin to taper off as they age, Hilary’s writing trajectory has been just the opposite. Though she had been writing scintillating fiction for over three decades, it is in the Cromwell trilogy, she found herself, truly and fully. It is as if her entire writing life, the discipline, the attention to detail, and the careful sharpening of prose, have led to this magnum opus. In these three volumes, she changed the course of how one should write historical fiction or fiction in general. Even If all her other books are forgotten, and lost to time, the Cromwell trilogy will survive as one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. Together, the three books run to nearly 1500 pages, but it is worth every page. When asked why she chose to write about Cromwell, her response was to find out how a son of a blacksmith with no formal education, rose up the highly bureaucratic hierarchy of 16th century England to become one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, and from there to lose his head to the very same man who lifted him up. It was an extraordinary story that changed the course of English history, and that of the western world. The facts are few and clear, but there was vast scope for weaving the facts with the fabric of imagination.
In an interview with the Guardian given in 2021, Hilary spoke about her future: “Finishing the Cromwell trilogy is a real landmark. There are lots of possibilities but I’m 70 next year and my health isn’t getting any better. I would love to do more work in theatre but I think it depends on my physical stamina. But, if it turns out I’ve left it too late, there’s nothing to regret.” We agree, there is nothing to regret from her point to view. It is a full life, lived with tremendous courage against all kinds of odds, resilient, and with a corpus of writing that has raised the standards of literature. As readers, her devote admirers, there is a tinge of regret, that she may have left us a little early; but that is the selfish me asking for more. Greatness must have an end, otherwise, we take it for granted. Over the weekend, I read “Giving up the ghost” again, as my personal tribute to a writer who has shaped so much of my interest and love for literature, and the craft of writing.
Thank you, Hilary. You will remain in me forever as an embodiment of the essence and style of the written word.