The Mirror & the Light

Does the third installment of Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy have the astonishing first-person intimacy of Wolf Hall or the taut dramatic blocking of Bring Up the Bodies? No – but, then, it shouldn't. The Mirror & the Light begins with Thomas Cromwell near the peak of his powers, in the latter years of his life, and the growing despotic decadence of King Henry VIII's rule. This man has seen and done some shit, and it shows. Mantel's non-fiction (see: Giving Up the Ghost or Mantel Pieces) reveal her to be uncommonly obsessed with ghosts. This is just another way of saying that she understands the inescapable presentness of history, the elliptical nature of human memory, the way that some of our most important relationships we must negotiate are with people and things and places fixed in the past. Mirror is the fullest exploration of these themes in her fiction, a true masterpiece in her oeuvre.