The life so short, the craft so long to lerne
September 23, 2022 5:22 AM Subscribe
Dame Hilary Mantel, author of (among others) the Wolf Hall trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, has died of a stroke at age 70. Among previous appearances on Metafilter: discussing historical fiction, describing life in the court of Henry VIII, and recounting her own history with endometriosis.
You don't have to be very old to realize that someday your parents, your mentors, and your friends will, sooner or later, start dying on you. But it wasn't until Ursula LeGuin's death that I realized my favorite authors were also mortal. This is, for me, a blow in the same category.
You don't have to be very old to realize that someday your parents, your mentors, and your friends will, sooner or later, start dying on you. But it wasn't until Ursula LeGuin's death that I realized my favorite authors were also mortal. This is, for me, a blow in the same category.
Oh wow. I haven't even read The Mirror & the Light yet, because I didn't feel prepared for the death of Thomas Cromwell, as written by her.
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posted by the primroses were over at 5:32 AM on September 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
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posted by the primroses were over at 5:32 AM on September 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
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posted by pangolin party at 5:49 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by pangolin party at 5:49 AM on September 23, 2022
Some chosen passages shared on Twitter.
posted by doctornemo at 5:53 AM on September 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 5:53 AM on September 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
I just can't believe it. I don't know what to do--losing Straub and Mantel so close together?
At this point I don't remember what made me pick up Wolf Hall--knowing me, I thought it was about werewolves or something--and from the first paragraph, the first line, realizing I was in the hands of a writer unlike any I had read before. The physical and psychological immediacy of it, it shouldn't have been possible to write a big historical novel full to the brim with names and titles, that felt simultaneously so epic and so focused. My favorite, though (and it's a hard thing to pick), is Beyond Black, a supernatural mystery that is somehow both devastating and optimistic at the same time. It was very strange coming off Thomas Cromwell and the hard-edged reality of his world, into a world of mediums and ghosts, but it all worked, it all fit, because of Mantel's keen eye for minds, for how we think when exposed to the extremities of life (and afterlife). Her humor, balanced by morbidity. I still don't understand how she did it.
posted by mittens at 6:02 AM on September 23, 2022 [22 favorites]
At this point I don't remember what made me pick up Wolf Hall--knowing me, I thought it was about werewolves or something--and from the first paragraph, the first line, realizing I was in the hands of a writer unlike any I had read before. The physical and psychological immediacy of it, it shouldn't have been possible to write a big historical novel full to the brim with names and titles, that felt simultaneously so epic and so focused. My favorite, though (and it's a hard thing to pick), is Beyond Black, a supernatural mystery that is somehow both devastating and optimistic at the same time. It was very strange coming off Thomas Cromwell and the hard-edged reality of his world, into a world of mediums and ghosts, but it all worked, it all fit, because of Mantel's keen eye for minds, for how we think when exposed to the extremities of life (and afterlife). Her humor, balanced by morbidity. I still don't understand how she did it.
posted by mittens at 6:02 AM on September 23, 2022 [22 favorites]
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For folks who've only read her Cromwell trilogy, The Giant, O'Brien is a tour de force, and a lot shorter.
posted by terretu at 6:05 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
For folks who've only read her Cromwell trilogy, The Giant, O'Brien is a tour de force, and a lot shorter.
posted by terretu at 6:05 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
Mittens, it makes me happy to know I am not the only person in the world who loved Beyond Black.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 6:07 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 6:07 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
When I read the first book Wolf Hall, I am not embarrassed as an English major to say that her writing made that entire swath of history and characters go from a smear of half-remembered stuff on the page to a vivid scene that I could see and hear and smell -- and not stop thinking about!
What a gift for writing -- and how lucky for us that Mantel used that gift to bring history alive.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:10 AM on September 23, 2022 [16 favorites]
What a gift for writing -- and how lucky for us that Mantel used that gift to bring history alive.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:10 AM on September 23, 2022 [16 favorites]
I was already dragging my feet a bit on finishing The Mirror and the Light (it's due back at the library tomorrow), but this is not going to make it any easier.
Such a loss.
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posted by thecaddy at 6:20 AM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Such a loss.
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posted by thecaddy at 6:20 AM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Was absolutely enthralled by Wolf Hall. I can still 'see' scenes I read in it 10+ years ago. Read 50 pages of Bringing up the Bodies and was like.. eh. I had a similar experience with My Brilliant Friend... maybe the first book was so immaculate and perfect I was just done with that universe after one book. Anyway amazingly skilled person. Per Wikipedia she seems to have had an unusual life as well.
posted by latkes at 6:39 AM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by latkes at 6:39 AM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Oh wow. I haven't even read The Mirror & the Light yet, because I didn't feel prepared for the death of Thomas Cromwell, as written by her.
Same. I was really saddened to see this headline this morning.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:42 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Same. I was really saddened to see this headline this morning.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:42 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by miles per flower at 6:42 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by miles per flower at 6:42 AM on September 23, 2022
Whenever I attend to my filing, it's because I'm trying to emulate Thomas Cromwell.
posted by Hermione Dies at 6:44 AM on September 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by Hermione Dies at 6:44 AM on September 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
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Count me among those who discovered her after reading Wolf Hall, and being so dazzled by the way she wrote about a period of history that isn't exactly seeing short shrift in adaptations, be they TV or film. She outdid any visual media with her words. I am sorry to hear of her passing, truly.
posted by Kitteh at 7:00 AM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Count me among those who discovered her after reading Wolf Hall, and being so dazzled by the way she wrote about a period of history that isn't exactly seeing short shrift in adaptations, be they TV or film. She outdid any visual media with her words. I am sorry to hear of her passing, truly.
posted by Kitteh at 7:00 AM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
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posted by lalochezia at 7:07 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by lalochezia at 7:07 AM on September 23, 2022
Very sad news. She had already given us so much, yet I feel that she had so much more to write.
posted by rpfields at 7:08 AM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by rpfields at 7:08 AM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Her novel Fludd was as viciously anti clerical as anything written, and precise in it's correction of the cosy views of the church as Pym, and the like.
posted by PinkMoose at 7:09 AM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by PinkMoose at 7:09 AM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
She had such a keen understanding of psychology and power, a great eye for the detail that makes the description and she could make me root for the most questionable characters. I think she could have made me relate to anyone. I love that thing that some writers can do, where they lead their characters to make-or-break-choices, and pile on the forshadowing as to what the wrong choice will be, but when the moment comes, you as the reader are so firmly in the character's head, that you kinda get it, you really feel you'd make the wrong choice as well. George Eliott was so good at this, and so was Hilary Mantel. Reading her always felt visceral - It's one of the purest joys of reading for me, slipping into another person's skin, experiencing another person's life. Just magic.
Her prose was rich, without getting purple, precise, melodical. I would read her any day just for the prose, regardless of content matter. I remember an interview where she described how she practiced from an early age, each day finding the best words to describe the weather. I also remember her account of the ordeal it was to get A Place of Greater Safety published (which is actually my favourite of hers). She never pretended it was easy. She was profoundly passionate and completely unsentimental.
I used to say she was my favourite living writer, and now I can't say that any more, and it sucks.
posted by sohalt at 7:20 AM on September 23, 2022 [22 favorites]
Her prose was rich, without getting purple, precise, melodical. I would read her any day just for the prose, regardless of content matter. I remember an interview where she described how she practiced from an early age, each day finding the best words to describe the weather. I also remember her account of the ordeal it was to get A Place of Greater Safety published (which is actually my favourite of hers). She never pretended it was easy. She was profoundly passionate and completely unsentimental.
I used to say she was my favourite living writer, and now I can't say that any more, and it sucks.
posted by sohalt at 7:20 AM on September 23, 2022 [22 favorites]
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posted by HandfulOfDust at 7:27 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by HandfulOfDust at 7:27 AM on September 23, 2022
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I have, for obvious reasons, been thinking about her essay Royal Bodies a lot for the past couple of weeks. She will be remembered for her fiction, but her essays shouldn’t be overlooked.
posted by Kattullus at 7:32 AM on September 23, 2022 [14 favorites]
I have, for obvious reasons, been thinking about her essay Royal Bodies a lot for the past couple of weeks. She will be remembered for her fiction, but her essays shouldn’t be overlooked.
posted by Kattullus at 7:32 AM on September 23, 2022 [14 favorites]
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posted by thomas j wise at 7:36 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by thomas j wise at 7:36 AM on September 23, 2022
I like to recommend 'A Place of Greater Safety', which is a very interesting personal look at the French Revolution.
I didn't like the second book of the Wolf Hall trilogy as much, but the third book is the best. It has some rather thoughtful and poetic writing.
posted by ovvl at 7:37 AM on September 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
I didn't like the second book of the Wolf Hall trilogy as much, but the third book is the best. It has some rather thoughtful and poetic writing.
posted by ovvl at 7:37 AM on September 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
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I also loved Beyond Black. It’s not often that I have read a writer whose books are all in such distinct and varied voice - she had such a command of different registers.
When I read Wolf Hall I had to take it in small doses, like dark chocolate. So rich and dense.
I am sorry that we won’t get more from her. May her memory be for a blessing.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:44 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
I also loved Beyond Black. It’s not often that I have read a writer whose books are all in such distinct and varied voice - she had such a command of different registers.
When I read Wolf Hall I had to take it in small doses, like dark chocolate. So rich and dense.
I am sorry that we won’t get more from her. May her memory be for a blessing.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:44 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
Oh gosh, that's terrible. What a sad loss.
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 7:48 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 7:48 AM on September 23, 2022
I'm absolutely crushed.
His children are falling from the sky. He watches from horseback, acres of England stretching behind him; they drop, gilt-winged, each with a blood-filled gaze. Grace Cromwell hovers in thin air. She is silent when she takes her prey, silent as she glides to his fist. But the sounds she makes then, the rustle of feathers and the creak, the sigh and riffle of pinion, the small cluck-cluck from her throat, these are sounds of recognition, intimate, daughterly, almost disapproving. Her breast is gore-streaked and flesh clings to her claws.posted by praemunire at 8:00 AM on September 23, 2022 [20 favorites]
Later, Henry will say, ‘Your girls flew well today.’ The hawk Anne Cromwell bounces on the glove of Rafe Sadler, who rides by the king in easy conversation. They are tired; the sun is declining, and they ride back to Wolf Hall with the reins slack on the necks of their mounts. Tomorrow his wife and two sisters will go out. These dead women, their bones long sunk in London clay, are now transmigrated. Weightless, they glide on the upper currents of the air. They pity no one. They answer to no one. Their lives are simple. When they look down they see nothing but their prey, and the borrowed plumes of the hunters: they see a flittering, flinching universe, a universe filled with their dinner.
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I carried A Place of Greater Safety on a plane trip, which seems like a bad place for a giant hardback book, but I did not regret it one bit. Although I never really took to Wolf Hall because of my general dislike of Tudor fiction, I have been transfixed by other works of hers that I've read, and I see now there are more books than I was aware of.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:15 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I carried A Place of Greater Safety on a plane trip, which seems like a bad place for a giant hardback book, but I did not regret it one bit. Although I never really took to Wolf Hall because of my general dislike of Tudor fiction, I have been transfixed by other works of hers that I've read, and I see now there are more books than I was aware of.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:15 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Not mentioned so far is her early Experiment in Love, which is a vivid depiction of what it's like to go hungry--physically, emotionally, spiritually--in a place of plenty.
posted by praemunire at 8:18 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by praemunire at 8:18 AM on September 23, 2022
The whole sequence around Cromwell leaving home and his sister and his trip to the sea in Wolf Hall was so evocative and moving that it's still blowing my brain all these years later. What a writer Mantel was. So sad to put that in past tense.
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posted by Wretch729 at 8:20 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by Wretch729 at 8:20 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was looking forward to seeing what would come next after the end of the Cromwell trilogy. I struggled at the end of The Mirror and the Light; what was the use of that world, without him in it?
I wasn't a fan of Beyond Black when I read it, but nevermind. Damn, what a writer.
posted by minsies at 9:09 AM on September 23, 2022
I wasn't a fan of Beyond Black when I read it, but nevermind. Damn, what a writer.
posted by minsies at 9:09 AM on September 23, 2022
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I don't know why I picked up Wolf Hall - perhaps the award winner sticker on the cover. I read it through and remember closing the book and holding it in my hands staring into space for a long while. A long long while. Then I turned it over and started again. I have probably read it 10-20 times, own it both in paper and kindle. And the rest of the series as well.
Thanks for the reminder to read her works outside the Wolf Hall series.
posted by some chick at 9:10 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
I don't know why I picked up Wolf Hall - perhaps the award winner sticker on the cover. I read it through and remember closing the book and holding it in my hands staring into space for a long while. A long long while. Then I turned it over and started again. I have probably read it 10-20 times, own it both in paper and kindle. And the rest of the series as well.
Thanks for the reminder to read her works outside the Wolf Hall series.
posted by some chick at 9:10 AM on September 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
You come to this place, mid-life. You don’t know how you got here, but suddenly you’re staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn’t. When the midwife says, ‘It’s a boy,’ where does the girl go? When you think you’re pregnant, and you’re not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines.From Mantel's memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:15 AM on September 23, 2022 [20 favorites]
Ars longa, vita brevis.
posted by Ardnamurchan at 9:47 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Ardnamurchan at 9:47 AM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by mygothlaundry at 9:57 AM on September 23, 2022
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:57 AM on September 23, 2022
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Damn.
The Wolf Hall series captured loss and memory and aging so well. And power and greed and empty desire and about a hundred other genuine, human afflictions. It was a tough set of books to read. I tasted ashes the while.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 11:00 AM on September 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
Damn.
The Wolf Hall series captured loss and memory and aging so well. And power and greed and empty desire and about a hundred other genuine, human afflictions. It was a tough set of books to read. I tasted ashes the while.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 11:00 AM on September 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
I really loved Beyond Black, but after a certain point I felt the need to know what she actually believed about the kind of psychic phenomena she absolutely takes for granted in the context of the book, because the book had split in two for me: one book if she thinks there's something there, and another very different book if she doesn’t.
So I stopped reading at about the moment the homeless guy moves into the garden shed, with the thought I’d pick it back up when I happened across some tidbit that allowed me to interpolate her stance on such things, but that hasn’t happened and now the probabilities have gone down, and I’ll most likely have to finish it without knowing, and also without the sense of communion with the author I always feel when I read a book by a living person.
posted by jamjam at 11:32 AM on September 23, 2022
So I stopped reading at about the moment the homeless guy moves into the garden shed, with the thought I’d pick it back up when I happened across some tidbit that allowed me to interpolate her stance on such things, but that hasn’t happened and now the probabilities have gone down, and I’ll most likely have to finish it without knowing, and also without the sense of communion with the author I always feel when I read a book by a living person.
posted by jamjam at 11:32 AM on September 23, 2022
What a loss to literature. Sentence for sentence, her writing is endlessly brilliant -- rarely flashy, but always incredibly evocative, surprising, and sharp as a knife.
As it happens, I am in the middle of rereading "Bring Up The Bodies". I've been almost dreading moving on to "The Mirror and the Light", which I haven't read yet. This will make it all the harder.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:15 PM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
As it happens, I am in the middle of rereading "Bring Up The Bodies". I've been almost dreading moving on to "The Mirror and the Light", which I haven't read yet. This will make it all the harder.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:15 PM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
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posted by gentlyepigrams at 2:40 PM on September 23, 2022
posted by gentlyepigrams at 2:40 PM on September 23, 2022
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posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:22 PM on September 23, 2022
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:22 PM on September 23, 2022
What a loss.
A Place of Greater Safety is incredible. All her stuff is incredible.
Ugh.
posted by kbanas at 5:02 PM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
A Place of Greater Safety is incredible. All her stuff is incredible.
Ugh.
posted by kbanas at 5:02 PM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I loved Beyond Black but couldn’t read it again. For me it recreated the psychiatric experience of PTSD so perfectly that it was very hard to read. The way that flashbacks are a combination of fact, confabulation and nightmare. The main character was a victim of CSA, perpetrated by her abusive mother’s alcoholic friends. As an adult she is haunted by “visitations” from the ghosts of her abusers.
I don’t think the ghosts are real. I don’t think the main character killed anyone. I don’t think there was a dead woman in her mother’s shed. These are the nightmares of a child who can’t make sense of what is happening to her, carried into adulthood. The sense of your memories being completely out of your control in PTSD was something that resonated very deeply with me. The terror that if you lift the lid, or remember your trauma, you won’t be able to put back what gets out. Mantel was a fantastic, skilled author who obviously had a very deep understanding of psychology.
posted by tinkletown at 5:50 PM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don’t think the ghosts are real. I don’t think the main character killed anyone. I don’t think there was a dead woman in her mother’s shed. These are the nightmares of a child who can’t make sense of what is happening to her, carried into adulthood. The sense of your memories being completely out of your control in PTSD was something that resonated very deeply with me. The terror that if you lift the lid, or remember your trauma, you won’t be able to put back what gets out. Mantel was a fantastic, skilled author who obviously had a very deep understanding of psychology.
posted by tinkletown at 5:50 PM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 7:41 PM on September 23, 2022
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 7:41 PM on September 23, 2022
On Thatcher: “She lives on the fumes of whisky and the iron in the blood of her prey."
EDIT: Out of context that looks like praise. It decidedly was not.
posted by Ian A.T. at 9:30 PM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
EDIT: Out of context that looks like praise. It decidedly was not.
posted by Ian A.T. at 9:30 PM on September 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I am absolutely gutted. Such as loss for the books she still should have had years to write. We can only turn to what she left us... and what a legacy that is.
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posted by jokeefe at 10:39 PM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by jokeefe at 10:39 PM on September 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Hilary Mantel is hands down one of my all-time favorite writers. This is the saddest news.
posted by thivaia at 10:50 PM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by thivaia at 10:50 PM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Damn.
Her works and memory are to be treasured as we shall not see the like.
From her discussion of her books, "Beyond Black" is her attempt to deal with the traumas of her childhood.
She was a contributing editor to the LRB - so I figure the subscription is worth it just to access the archive of her writing. When she applied her analysis to a person/place/culture - and sliced away layer upon layer to reveal how to cope.
And my children knew to give me one of my favourite Christmas presents, the collection of short stories, "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher."
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:29 PM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Her works and memory are to be treasured as we shall not see the like.
From her discussion of her books, "Beyond Black" is her attempt to deal with the traumas of her childhood.
She was a contributing editor to the LRB - so I figure the subscription is worth it just to access the archive of her writing. When she applied her analysis to a person/place/culture - and sliced away layer upon layer to reveal how to cope.
And my children knew to give me one of my favourite Christmas presents, the collection of short stories, "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher."
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:29 PM on September 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Mittens, it makes me happy to know I am not the only person in the world who loved Beyond Black.
Far from it. It's my favourite, next to A Place of Greater Safety.
posted by jokeefe at 9:58 AM on September 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Far from it. It's my favourite, next to A Place of Greater Safety.
posted by jokeefe at 9:58 AM on September 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
I just read Giving up the Ghost and am shaken. It’s big and deep and a lot.
posted by PussKillian at 7:00 PM on October 4, 2022
posted by PussKillian at 7:00 PM on October 4, 2022
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