Bring Up the Bodies
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4.3 • 167 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Now a major TV series
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012
Winner of the 2012 Costa Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction
‘Simply exceptional…I envy anyone who hasn’t yet read it’ Daily Mail
‘A gripping story of tumbling fury and terror’ Independent on Sunday
With this historic win for Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel becomes the first British author and the first woman to be awarded two Man Booker Prizes.
By 1535 Thomas Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, the king’s new wife. But Anne has failed to give the king an heir, and Cromwell watches as Henry falls for plain Jane Seymour. Cromwell must find a solution that will satisfy Henry, safeguard the nation and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge unscathed from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.
An astounding literary accomplishment, Bring Up the Bodies is the story of this most terrifying moment of history, by one of our greatest living novelists.
Reviews
‘This is a bloody story about the death of Anne Boleyn, but Hilary Mantel is a writer who thinks through the blood. She uses her power of prose to create moral ambiguity and the real uncertainty of political life … She has recast the most essential period of our modern English history; we have the greatest modern English prose writer reviving possibly one of the best known pieces of English history’ Sir Peter Stothard, Chair of the judges for the Man Booker Prize 2012
‘Simply exceptional … I envy anyone who hasn’t yet read it’ Sandra Parsons, Daily Mail
‘In another league. This ongoing story of Henry VIII’s right-hand man is the finest piece of historical fiction I have ever read. A staggering achievement’ Sarah Crompton, Sunday Telegraph
‘Succeeds brilliantly in every particle … it’s an imaginative achievement to exhaust superlatives’ Spectator
‘Wolf Hall was a tour de force, but its sequel is leaner, more brilliant, more shocking than its predecessor’ Erica Wagner, The Times
‘Picks up the body parts where Wolf Hall left off … literary invention does not fail her: she's as deft and verbally adroit as ever’ Margaret Atwood, Guardian
‘Mantel in the voice of Cromwell is inspired. When she is in full flow as a novelist, creating scenes and inventing dialogue, she is more convincing than rendering a recorded scene from history’ Philippa Gregory, Sunday Express
‘Don’t think you can start this book whenever you feel like it – plan ahead, as, once started, it’s impossible to escape its grip, and until it’s finished, you won’t get any sleep’ Country Life
About the author
Hilary Mantel is the author of seventeen 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 latest novel, The Mirror & the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, while Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were both awarded the Booker Prize.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
When it won the Man Booker Prize in 2012, Bring Up the Bodies became the first sequel to win the prize. The second instalment in Hilary Mantel’s riveting Thomas Cromwell series picks up where 2009’s Booker winner, Wolf Hall, ends, charting the cunning statesman’s residence with the Seymour family and his involvement in King Henry VIII’s rift with Anne Boleyn. Gorgeously written, Mantel’s historical fiction is vivid and visceral, giving events from the past the nailbiting quality of the best TV dramas. The British author’s talent for channeling the warped machinations of the royal court—and the complex motivations of its main players—is an uncanny triumph.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When last we saw Thomas Cromwell, hero of Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall, he'd successfully moved emperors, queens, courtiers, the pope, and Thomas More to secure a divorce and a new, younger queen for his patron, Henry the VIII. Now, in the second book of a planned trilogy, Cromwell, older, tired, with more titles and power, has to get Henry out of another heirless marriage. The historical facts are known: this is not about what happens, but about how. And armed with street smarts, vast experience and connections, a ferociously good memory, and a patient taste for revenge, Mantel's Cromwell is a master of how. Like its predecessor, the book is written in the present tense, rare for a historical novel. But the choice makes the events unfold before us: one wrong move and all could be lost. Also repeated is Mantel's idiosyncratic use of "he:" regardless of the rules of grammar, rest assured "he" is always Cromwell. By this second volume, however, Mantel has taught us how to read her, and seeing Cromwell manipulate and outsmart the nobles who look down on him, while moving between his well-managed domestic arrangements and the murky world of accusations and counteraccusations is pure pleasure. Cromwell may, as we learn in the first volume, look "like a murderer," but he's mighty good company.
Customer Reviews
Superb sequel
If you enjoyed the author's Wolf Hall, you will want to read this sequel, as it is every bit as good. Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's Master Secretary, connives at the fall of his queen, Anne Boleyn. As a subtle study of the use of power and how it imperceptibly consumes and corrupts, these books have few equals. As historical novels about this period, they have none.
Bring Up The Bodies
The 5th or 6th time of reading this - and Wolf Hall.
To read these books is to absolutely luxuriate in the English language and the art of storytelling.
Ken Seddon