Mantel does the double and claims the Costa Book Award for Bring Up the Bodies.
Hilary Mantel Photo: David
Rose
The Telegraph - 29 Jan 2013
So it's Hilary Mantel, again. Bring Up the Bodies has
won the overall Costa Book Award following Mantel's Man Booker victory in 2009
for Wolf Hall, and the same award for its sequel last year. It has beaten not
only all the other novels of 2012, but also the best poetry collection,
biography, first novel and children’s book. Mantel’s all-conquering Tudor saga,
which last year sold 313,000 copies in this country, is well on the way to
becoming a classic with a BBC and RSC adaptation already in the works.
Inevitably there will be grumbles from the sceptics. Was there really no
other novel published in 2012 to compete with Bring Up the Bodies? How did Zadie
Smith’s NW, her most accomplished work to date, miss
out on even a measly shortlisting? What about Nicola Barker’s eccentrically
hilarious The Yips? Then there are the whispered doubts
about Bring Up and the Bodies itself. Longtime Mantel readers say her darkly
experimental Beyond Black was a superior book. And does the Tudor setting
with its familiar historical characters – Henry VIII and all that – make its
popularity a form of easy nostalgia?
Maybe there’s some truth to that. The richness of its language and
psychological penetration cannot hide the fact that Wolf Hall and Bring Up the
Bodies can be read as posh Philippa Gregory. I cannot also help thinking that
given its now near-canonical reputation, the judges might have been a touch
intimidated – refusing Thomas Cromwell, as the novels' readers will know, is by
no means easy. One of the best other contenders, the graphic memoir Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary and Bryan
Talbot, is beautifully done and highly original. But like the first novel
category winner Francesca Segal’s The Innocents – an astute and well-crafted
take on Jewish North London – I cannot honestly say it deserved to steal
Mantel’s crown.
With Bring Up the Bodies, Mantel has relaxed into the sequence, writing with
greater economy and wit. The false notes in Wolf Hall – too much love for
Cromwell, too little for his rival Thomas More – were muffled in the sequel by
Cromwell’s growing ruthlessness and More’s death. The sequence in which Henry
VIII falls from his horse while jousting and is suspected dead is especially
brilliant. Even though you know the real historical outcome Mantel, like
Shakespeare in his history plays, puts you in the shoes of participants who
cannot have known how things would turn out.
Most pleasing, though, is the sheer joy Mantel takes in writing the books –
something shared by her many readers. When was the last time a prize-winning
book doubled as a holiday treat?
No comments:
Post a Comment