Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell Trilogy Book 2)

I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours? There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have: And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again" Enter Cromwell, standing amazed Shakespeare: View all 4 comments.

May 10, Michelle Cristiani marked it as to-read Shelves: I'm already upset there won't be a book 4. Wish Cromwell had lived longer. Apr 01, Patti marked it as to-read. This book is not published as yet - but is due out very soon. Jan 18, Heather Cupit added it. How can we review a book that Hilary Mantel hasn't published? Is it purely to try to gain an idea of how many people will be reading it?

I do think this is very curious. Annie rated it really liked it Jul 28, Gay rated it it was amazing Sep 18, Alyce Drimel rated it liked it Sep 09, Laurie Kennedy rated it really liked it Mar 15, Wendy Sun rated it liked it Sep 15, Adrienne Van rated it liked it Jan 15, May 10, Olu da Silva marked it as to-read.

It will be really interesting to see if this book works: Although both of the other books are about Thomas Cromwell, the drama and story are provided by Anne Boleyn. Without her, I don't know if it will measure up. Will certainly give it a chance. Mary rated it really liked it Mar 20, Mysticca rated it it was amazing Jan 22, Brenda rated it really liked it Mar 01, Lexandre Goss rated it it was amazing Mar 14, Cecilia Dunbar Hernandez rated it it was amazing Nov 23, Nathalie rated it it was amazing Oct 04, At length, the King tells Cromwell privately, "I cannot live as I have.

Cromwell promises the King he will find a legal way to make this happen. Ever the dealmaker, Cromwell attempts to negotiate a voluntary dissolution of the marriage with Anne through her father, the Earl of Wiltshire , and her brother, Lord Rochford.

Wiltshire is willing to negotiate, but Rochford is intransigent, telling Cromwell that if Anne and the King are reconciled, "I will make short work of you. Cromwell makes inquiries among the ladies and gentlemen who are close to Anne and hears more and more rumors that she has been adulterous. The musician Mark Smeaton and Anne's sister-in-law, Lady Rochford , are particularly helpful in passing on rumors.

He determines to build a case against Anne and succeeds in doing so, ultimately securing enough damaging testimony to have her arrested and tried on capital charges. The King seems quite willing to see Anne destroyed if it will serve his purposes. Mindful that some of the people closest to Anne connived at the ruin of his old mentor Cardinal Wolsey , Cromwell relishes the opportunity to bring them down as well. In the end, Anne and several of her confidantes, including her brother, are tried and executed. Cromwell is aware that not all of the evidence against them is true, but he is willing to do what is necessary to serve the King and to avenge Wolsey , and having started the process he must see it through if he himself is to survive.

As the King focuses on a new marriage with Jane Seymour, Cromwell is rewarded for his efforts with a barony and his position as the King's chief adviser seems assured. But in Bring Up the Bodies it works as one. The wonder of Ms. Much of what I wrote in my review of Wolf Hall may be inserted here. Like the title of Wolf Hall , this title has a different meaning than you might think unless you are exceptionally in-the-know.

And as I also said about Wolf Hall , this is not your average, run-of-the-mill historical fiction: As I neared the end, I was starting to become resigned to the fact that I wouldn't be as excited by any particular passage as I had been with the one I quoted in my review of Wolf Hall and that perhaps I was spoiled by what was so fresh in "Wolf Hall" but then I arrived at the final page View all 29 comments. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. The books of Hilary Mantel on Thomas Cromwell are superb, grande.

I give a slight preference to Wolf Hall, because that book was groundbreaking, a new take on this famous piece of history, seen through the eyes of Thomas There are no endings. I give a slight preference to Wolf Hall, because that book was groundbreaking, a new take on this famous piece of history, seen through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell.

However, again Bring up the bodies is sublime and of course tells the dark tale of the fall of Anne Boleyn, fascinating. And Mantel is a great storyteller Something happens to Anne then, which later he will not quite understand. She seems to dissolve and slip from their grasp, from Kingston's hands and his, she seems to liquefy and elude them, and when she resolves herself once more into woman's form she is on hands and knees on the cobbles, her head thrown back, wailing.

Fitzwilliam, the Lord Chancellor, even her uncle, steps back; Kingston frowns, his deputy shakes his head, Richard Riche looks stricken. He, Cromwell, takes hold of her - since no one else will do it - and sets her back on her feet. She weighs nothing, and as he lifts her, her wail breaks off, as if her breath had been stopped. Silent, she steadies herself against his shoulder, leans into him: One thing is for sure: Cromwell is always planning ahead.

A true chess player. And so far, he does that pretty well. And also the poor foul Mark who made a ballad of their exploits. I am now watching the dvd of the BBC series that I was very careful not to touch while I was still reading the book Very good as well. The part on Thomas More stands out in the series so far I do hope Ms. Can't wait for the third book. View all 27 comments. The final last paragraph -- perfect. Cromwell now to me will always be "he, Cromwell". This little stylistic flourish did add clarity, compared with Wolf Hall. To purposefully use just "he" in the first book was at times confusing, forcing one to stop and step out of the story to regain one's bearings.

Sort of like breaking the fourth wall -- and perhaps that was the point then, a metafictional technique? This book just sailed on from Wolf Hall Aaaahhh. This book just sailed on from Wolf Hall. Immersion was swift and total. Another Booker winner, I hope. View all 6 comments. His whole career has been an education in hypocrisy. Eyes that once skewered him now kindle with simulated regard. Hands that would like to knock his hat off now reach out to take his hand, sometimes in a crushing grip. He has spun his enemies to face him, to join him: He means to spin them away again, so they look down the long cold vista of their years: Be car His whole career has been an education in hypocrisy.

Be careful what you wish for. But pride, and not popping out a male heir, goeth before the fall, and well, the girl should have known. I mean H8 was not exactly a model hubby to his first wife. Time for the head of household to summon Mister Fixit. Rafe Sadler and Stephen Gardiner Looking for advice on ridding yourself of unwanted household pests?

Running low on funds for your comfortable lifestyle? Need the occasional hard thump to the torso to get the old ticker restarted? Need to re-direct your reproductive efforts towards a more masculine outcome? Need to fend off potential assaults by enemies foreign and domestic? Thomas Cromwell, a man of modest origins who had risen to the highest position in the land, that did not absolutely require aristocratic genes, had already demonstrated a penchant for getting things done, by whatever means necessary.

Read that and when you are done, feel free to return. What are you waiting for? Not only had H8 succeeded in flipping the bird a falcon in this case — see the badges below to the RC, but he was engaged in swiping their stuff as well. We doan need no steenking Pope. Cromwell was the guy who had done most of the fixing. So everything should be fine now, right?

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

H8 has an eye problem. It wanders uncontrollably, in this instance to young, demure Jane Seymour. Of course there is the pesky business of clearing that obstruction from the royal path, and Mister Fixit is called in sorry, summoned to make it go away. Cromwell also has an excellent network of spies sprinkled throughout the realm. Combine the two, make much of what was probably idle gossip, add a dollop or three of spite and voila. For good measure, TC takes particular pleasure in focusing his skills on those who had done dirt to his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, ticking off each one as they succumb to his devilry.

But as long as the folks in charge can get the people with weapons to do their bidding it does not much matter. There is no law, really, only power. Legal processes are often mere window dressing to the underlying exercise of big fish eating smaller fish, and sometimes spitting them out. The fiction of legality keeps the mass of smaller fish from chomping their much larger tormenters to bits. Sort of like now. Bring Up the Bodies is a masterful achievement, showing, step-by-step, how dark aims are orchestrated and achieved.

In laying this out, Hilary Mantel also offers us a look at how the reins of power can be abused by the unscrupulous, and Thomas Cromwell is shown in his full unscrupulousness in this volume. He was gonna get these guys and when he saw his chance, he took it. We get to see him as a monster, despite his supposed desire to make England more equitable for working people. H8 is shown much more as a spoiled psycho-child in this volume. Whatever his intelligence, whatever his accomplishments, what we see of Henry here is primarily his boorishness, his childishness.

I want what I want and I do not care who gets hurt, or even killed, so I can have it. Mantel won a second Booker prize for this one, and it was well deserved. It is an easier read than the first book, more engaging, if that is possible. If you have not seen the miniseries made from the combined volumes you really must. Hilary Mantel has brought out her best in Bring Up the Bodies , using her genius for historical fiction to make the old seem new again.

View all 22 comments. May 04, Diane rated it it was amazing Shelves: I started reading Bring Up the Bodies as soon as I finished Wolf Hall , and I've enjoyed this series so much I'm excited for Mantel's third volume, whenever it's published. While Wolf Hall focused on the rise of Anne Boleyn and how she became Queen of England, Bring Up the Bodies is about how the King decides to leave Anne when she can't give him a son, and her subsequent downfall and execution.

The story of her trial and beheading has been told many times, but I loved how Mantel chose to show us the scenes from Cromwell's perspective, and how he helped manipulate the proceedings. Cromwell even maneuvered to help the King find his next wife, Jane Seymour. This second book had good pacing and flowed more freely than the first one, perhaps because the first one had numerous flashbacks to Cromwell's childhood and the back-and-forth with Cardinal Wolsey.

Taken together, they are a masterpiece of historical fiction, and I highly recommend this series. Favorite Quotes "You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws. It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

So he has found men who are guilty.

Bring up the Bodies

Though perhaps not guilty as charged. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them. I have everything, you would think. And yet take Henry away, and I have nothing. We want the truth little by little and only those parts of it we can use. View all 9 comments. His masterful manipulation of people and circumstances to make the world as Henry wants it has brought Cromwell wealth and power.

Getting Anne Boleyn on the throne was a struggle. Now he has to get her off of it without losing his own head in the process. Mantel doesn't just tell history, she makes it come alive. In one scene I can't get out of my head: Henry has a temper tantrum because of the Spanish ambassador's continued disrespect towards his new wife, Anne, and the repeated requests from the Spanish crown for money owed.

The king blows his top at Cromwell and screams in his face. He says he believes Cromwell has always manipulated him and laughed at him. But he is king and he will not be steered. And, even though I knew the history, I thought for a moment Cromwell was going to be taken to the Tower in that instant. Instead, he quietly apologizes to the king and dismisses himself, then goes to a different room to take a drink. With shaking hands, Cromwell spills a drop of the wine on himself and sits there, contemplating the small stain on his shirt. And I said to myself, "Mantel is a genius.

She makes you forget you're reading a book. Cromwell's efforts to collect evidence against Queen Anne fills much of this book.

As he tightens his net around her, you can almost feel it tighten around yourself. Cromwell jokes with his sworn men to ease some of the tension, but it is always there, buzzing beneath the surface. Highly recommended for historical fiction readers. Bring Up the Bodies is one of the best books I've read this year. Feb 09, Brian rated it it was amazing. In "Bring up the Bodies" Hilary Mantel has written a shorter and tighter novel than its predecessor "Wolf Hall", and it is just as good!

I tore through the book in a few days, and I am eagerly anticipating the third and final installment in the series. Most of the joy of "Bring up the Bodies" is Mantel's lovely writing, and her masterful creation and depiction of the series' main protagonist Thomas Cromwell. The story is told mainly from a third person perspective, but it is an omniscient narrato In "Bring up the Bodies" Hilary Mantel has written a shorter and tighter novel than its predecessor "Wolf Hall", and it is just as good! The story is told mainly from a third person perspective, but it is an omniscient narrator who sometimes enters the minds and thoughts of the characters, so we occasionally get a first person point of view.

This stylistic choice further adds to the novel's strengths as a well written text. As already mentioned, one of the main pleasures of this book is Mantel's creation of Cromwell, a historical figure we actually don't know a lot about.

Hilary Mantel: why I became a historical novelist

Her interpretation of this man is wonderful and full bodied on so many levels. He is an intellectual giant among worms, and he enjoys himself immensely. His almost perverse pleasure at ensnaring into the web of Anne Boleyn's downfall the four noblemen who mocked his late beloved mentor Cardinal Wolsey in a play years before is an excellent plot contrivance that Mantel's creates to show that Cromwell is capable of pettiness, and is also quite dangerous.

Mantel deploys considerable skill in the four scenes where Cromwell entraps each of these four men into his web. He is the perfect Machiavellian, doing a service for his king, and himself at the same time. Another breathtaking moment in the text among many is the excellent scene where Cromwell tricks Mark Smeaton a dandy musician into "confessing" adultery with Queen Anne.

It is simply riveting writing. In "Bring up the Bodies" Mantel shows Cromwell growing into his power, and thus he is not nearly as likable as he was in "Wolf Hall". He is becoming a lot like the people he detests. There are so many ironic and foreshadowing lines that hint at Cromwell's own end that I kept thinking as I read, "you reap what you sow". If you know the actual history of these events you will catch these references and it will increase your enjoyment of the book.

Pride is such a huge theme in this text, and it trips up so many people that one would be a dunce not to see the larger warnings about us as individuals that we can take from the novel. In short, Mantel's writing is fluid and lyrical and she is the rare storyteller who is also an excellent writer. Although "Bring up the Bodies" is less episodic and quicker to read than "Wolf Hall" it is no less enjoyable, and I can't wait for the next one!

View all 24 comments. Mar 08, Tim rated it it was amazing Shelves: Less richly dense and intimate; quicker paced, covering as it does a much smaller time frame than Wolf Hall. I read somewhere Mantel heeded criticism of her excessive and confusing use of the pronoun he in Wolf Hall. What this does is remove some of the sympathetic intimacy we feel for Cromwell. In fact, you realise what a stroke of genius it was in Wolf Hall. For the first time there are moments when we see him as something of a calculating despot, we begin to have an inkling of why he was hated so much.

We see the Michael Corleone in him. Reading between the lines you feel Mantel thinks these men were guilty but not guilty as charged. Those who are convinced she was innocent usually refer to her last will and testament in which she denied all charges. They say she would not lie, knowing she was about to die and about to meet her maker, that she would not risk an eternity in Hell by making a false statement. Posing the likelihood that biographers, no less than novelists, take huge liberties with the truth.

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Nov 20, K. Absolutely rated it it was amazing Recommended to K. I rarely give 5 stars but I can't help it with this Booker winner. I am still to read the last year's other Booker finalists but this book is one of the best among my recent reads. Hence, I think the Booker jurors made the right pick last year. Also, those friends of mine who already read this book and gave a 4 or 5 stars also made the right verdict: I am a Filipino who had m I rarely give 5 stars but I can't help it with this Booker winner.

I am a Filipino who had my early school years in an island in the Pacific. Our teachers did not bother telling us the stories about British royalties. So, when I read Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" two months ago, at first I struggled understanding that book's historical backdrop and I found myself Googling so many names and places. However, in the end, it was worth the effort. So, now I had an easier time reading Bring Up the Bodies. In fact, I resumed reading this two days ago and since we had a 4-day weekend last day is today due to the holidays, I had a busy New Year that I used mainly for finishing this book.

That seems like a simple retelling of a story contained in any history books about Tudors, right? However, Hilary Mantel is a genius in storytelling. She researched thoroughly the many writings about the Tudors and life in England during that time. She meticulously injected what could have been the appropriate dialogues in the many delicate scenes.

More importantly, her prose is extremely delightful to read. Reading the book is like ascending to heaven, it is like being blown away by sweeping wind while angels are sounding their trumpets and plucking the strings of their harps. I have never seen this kind of beautiful prose in any recent read or not even in any of the past Booker winning books.

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Hilary Mantel is one hell of a genius writer. What I particularly enjoyed was how Mantel made her characters interesting by baring to us both their internal struggles as well as their external issues. She seems do this by first second-guessing how her characters would react to a given situation. Mantel finished this off by allowing her characters in that situation their acute observations and incisive remarks.

This cycle seems to have worked wonderfully by making each of her major characters like we are watching them in a 3D or IMAX theater. This style also made this historical fiction come alive by making the reader an active participant in the story. This book is just wonderful. My first book finished this year. What a way to start !

Bring Up the Bodies

View all 18 comments. Nov 20, Darwin8u rated it it was amazing Shelves: Almost anything can be turned around: There is no drop-off in complexity. No laxity of language. Again, Mantel manages to shift form, change structure and reinvent her style. She even manages to give the character of Thomas Cromwell more depth and complexity, a feat which seemed near impossible after finishing Wolf Hall. Anyway, Mantel is one of the finest writers of English prose living.

Each sentence is crafted like a unique piece in an Italian inlaid music box.