Old Bodies

I got the Hilary Mantel sequel to Wolf Hall (called Bring up the Bodies) for Christmas. I have managed to flog myself through it and will dash off a quick review as my very (very) first blog post.  This will be by way of a recommendation in case you've not read it and no doubt a provocation in case you have.    

In places she shows signs of being a very good writer indeed.  But such places are well spaced out and none of them actually take your breath away.  The book is emotionally very flat.  When good writers achieve that you have to assume they intended it.  So I am puzzled - it's surely a fault in a 400 page book that it can't move the reader on a single page.  A hardback what's more, big and lumpy and too heavy to take to bed with you.  I am unlikely to read it again - and if you become a faithful reader here you will discover I'm a great one for re-reading things that delight me.  

The notoriously tricky syntax in Bring up the Bodies eventually  got up my nose.  It is tiring to read, because you are constantly put to guessing who is speaking.  I ended up frightening the dog, shouting "why is she doing this to me?"  And I still don't know.  I'm aware, of course that the fault is quite deep.  It's much deeper than the fact she uses the quaint device of only employing one pronoun when the English language has provided her with an ample supply, all free.  A self-imposed restriction that ranks alongside vowing never to use the leter "e".  In other words, it must have seemed a good idea at the time - the time being very late and two bottles down. You simply can't do that to a reader unless you have the necessary skill and patience to give each of your characters their own distinctive voice.  That's not easy, I assure you.  The Mantel characters do not have distinctive voices whatever else they have (mostly they have peculiar and rather sadistic tendencies, but that's for you to find out).  Not even Henry himself, the protagonist.  He sounds like a hairdresser.  There is a lot of dialogue in the book, including interior dialogue, and it all sounds like the author (who may well have hairdresser tendencies).  This is not to impugn a noble and necessary profession; it is simply a way of saying she's an author who possesses a very modern consciousness and she's not going to give it up.  Not for the likes of you and me - mere readers.  Result (as the French say): you simply can't believe that the characters are actually uttering any of the large number of words she gives them to say.  The book is an extended exercise in literary anachronism - all very entertaining in its own way, and possibly amusing for Mantel's postmodern chums.  But, my word, you do end up pining for the cod antique.  

I am no historian and cannot comment on its quality as a work of history, but I'll say this - the bones of many a  book stick out of it like the horns in one of Desperate Dan's cow pies. I know a bit about researching for a book (having done it).  It should be a secret, silent, invisible affair, like anonymous giving.  I really hate having research shoved in my face like this. As if the author wants revenge for all the effort she put in - and you, the poor bloody reader, will have to pay, because there's nobody else around. The Burgess novel A Dead Man in Deptford about Marlowe was far more impressive in that respect - and there speaks someone who doesn't really like Burgess very much.

So the thumb is neither up nor down, but more d than u.

Visit  Lasserrade Press http://tinyurl.com/lzuukwf