"Bring up the bodies" by Hilary Mantel

This sequel to Wolf Hall continues the story of Thomas Cromwell, Master Secretary to the government of Henry VIII. This episode deals with the  downfall of Anne Boleyn.

Part of the magic is the way the story is told in the present tense and from the point of view of Cromwell (although continually referring to him as 'he'). Indirect speech is mingled with quoted speech so that one is never quite sure what Cromwell is thinking and what he is saying; this supports the essential secrecy of the central protagonist. The attraction of this man is that he is so modern. Faced with a world of nobles, chivalry and jousts, he organises and manages. In sweeping away the monasteries he places the monarchy on a sound financial footing; he understands trade and banking. Throwaway lines show that he is the man to begin baptismal records, he extends the justice system to Wales, he doesn't use torture (although his interrogations scarcely suit modern sensibilities and the trials over which he presides are show trials), he seeks to place the parish priests on a proper footing, and he tries to bring in a Keynesian law to give public work to the unemployed.

This book doesn't have the immense power of Wolf Hall but it is a very readable sequel. It won the 2012 Booker, beating The Lighthouse by Alison Moore and Narcopolis by Jeff Thayil. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It also won the 2012 Costa Book Awards.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Vacant Possession" by Hilary Mantel

Deputy Headteacher Colin has a dysfunctional family. Teenage son Alastair and the vicar's son Austin sniff glue and burgle. Wife Sylvia embraces good causes. Undergraduate daughter Susannah gets pregnant by the husband of the woman whom Colin had a fling with ten years ago and leaves university to live in a squat. Mad mother is booted out of her geriatric hospital to live next door with his unmarried sister, Florence.

And Muriel Axon, the previous occupant of the house he now lives, in has been discharged from mental hospital and now, a mistress of disguise, has come to seek revenge.

But revenge for what? Muriel's problems come from her mum who was mad and kept her in the haunted house. The one time she escaped she was made pregnant (by the father of the woman Colin had an affair with); her mother then persuaded her to drown the child in the canal.

This is a black comedy. The characters lead meaningless lives against the bleak backdrop of unemployed Britain in the seventies and eighties. Their lives are tightly and intricately intertwined; coincidences abound. And Muriel isn't mad or stupid, she is wicked.

The one clue to what this all means is given when Sylvia reviews her decaying home and says that it is like the  Fall of the House of Usher to which Colin replies it is more like the fall of the House of Atreus. The House of Atreus was cursed by the Greek Gods because Tantalus cooked and served his son Pelops in a pie to the Gods. From there the crimes spread. Thyestes, twin brother of Atreus, had an affair with Aerope, wife of Atreus and unsuccessfully challenged Atreus for the throne of Mycenae. Aegisthus, son of Thyestes, killed Atreus, who had adopted him. Aegisthus then went on to have an affair with Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, son of Atreus. When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan war Clytemnestra and Aegisthus murdered him; Aegisthus usurped the throne. Later Orestes, Agamemnon's son, murders Clytemnestra and is punished by the Furies for his matricide.

But I suspect that Mantel does not intend her book to mean anything. She creates this tight knit cohort of saddoes and the she manipulates the coincidences and the crimes of Muriel until we build to a potentially horrific climax. The only logic to this is the mad perversities of Muriel (although we can feel that in some ways she is also a victim). And what happens next surely has to be in the sequel.

Black. Not really a comedy, not really a farce.

Mantel has written better books. Similar to this is the wonderfully funny Beyond Black, about a medium who really does interact with the spirit world even though she would rather not, and (of course) the brilliant Booker winning Wolf Hall and its Booker winning sequel Bring Up the Bodies.

August 2012; 239 pages

"Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel

I have read Mantel's Beyond Black and thoroughly enjoyed it but Wolf Hall is such a doorstep of a book that I thought I would find it tedious.

For at least the first hundred pages it was a historical bio-epic of no especial literary merit.  I was interested by the character of Thomas Cromwell, depicted sympathetically rather than the black-garbed devil of historical propaganda. I was slightly annoyed by the first person narrative in the third person: Cromwell refers to himself as 'he' but it is written entirely from his point of view and you think his thoughts.

Then I began to seriously identify with his character. As Deputy  to a larger than life Headteacher I have been the fixer, the manager, the creator of possibilities and sometimes the hitman, always surviving within and by the favour of my boss. And yesterday at a meeting I started thinking to myself: 'What would Cromwell do in this situation'.

I was also desperate to find out what happened to him and why the novel is named Wolf Hall.

When a character in a book grabs you so completely then you have to admit that somehow the novelist has become a magician and you are enchanted by her spells. And that is why it was shortlisted for the Costa Award in 2009, the Women's Prize for fiction in 2010 and won the Booker Prize (2009) and the inaugural Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2010.

Page turner.

March 2012; 650 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God