Jamie Malanowski

THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

2wolf hallPublishers’ Weekly has come out with its list of the ten best books of 2009. The fact that not one of the authors managed to be a woman would in itself require PW to do some energetic tap-dancing, but the fact that the single best book of the year has been written by a woman named Hilary Mantel is what emphasizes PW’s risible ignorance. And it’s not like Mantel’s novel, Wolf Hall, is some obscure, twee literary exercise; it’s a big, robust novel set in Tudor England, and it just won the prestigious Man Booker Prize.

During a decade when books and films and TV shows about Henry VIII are almost as common as vampire stories, Mantel pulled off the most remarkable coup and found a new way to tell the tale. She focused her tale on Thomas Cromwell, who in all other stories is a minor functionary who does the bidding of the monarch. Mantel takes Cromwell and makes him a new man in a new age–a commoner, a Protestant, a man whose power comes not from ancient titles but a knowledge of new forces–the law, the emerging global economy, spreading literacy. Mantel’s Cromwell is a thoroughly contemporary character, the sort of wise and resourceful and if necessary ruthless man we see nowadays sitting on boards and advising presidents and hopefully saving the world from self-destruction. It’s interesting that Cromwell’s adversary here is a man who in most other tellings of this tale is a hero, that Man for All Seasons Sir Thomas More. Mantel’s More is religious zealot who is tied to Rome and to a set of beliefs in furtherance of which he ordered torture and execution; a fundamentalist and an ascetic set against Cromwell’s modernist, curious, man of the world. And not only does Mantel do a terrific job reimagining the tale, she tells it brilliantly, with language that immerses you in the story, and a kind of urgent, sometimes eliptical construction that kind of makes you lean in closer to follow what’s happening.

Mantel says she is working on a sequel, but that right now all she has is a box of notes. Ms. Mantel, I am waiting.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *