Our Take

Hilary Mantel's magnificent conclusion to her Booker Prize-winning trilogy stands as one of the greatest achievements in contemporary literature—a towering work that transforms historical fiction into high art. Covering the final four years of Thomas Cromwell's life (1536-1540), Mantel employs her signature present-tense narration and experimental use of pronouns to plunge readers into the visceral immediacy of Tudor England, where every conversation is a dance with death and fortune's wheel turns without warning. What distinguishes this epic finale is how Mantel complicates our understanding of Cromwell: no longer just the living future fighting free of the dead past, he becomes part of that past himself, haunted by Cardinal Wolsey's ghost and bound by old grudges that will ultimately destroy him. The prose is majestic and breathtakingly poetic, rich with raw and unexpected diction that makes you slow down to savor sentences even as the 754 pages demand you press forward. Mantel's genius lies in making sixteenth-century instincts—like the willingness to decapitate anyone in your path—seem as plausible as Cromwell's more recognizable qualities, rendering him eerily contemporary while never anachronistic. Though some readers may find the middle section slower than the tightly focused Bring Up the Bodies, the deliberate pacing serves the tragedy, building toward Cromwell's sudden, shocking fall with devastating emotional power. For readers who appreciated the ambition of Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries or the historical depth of Philippa Gregory's Tudor novels, Mantel offers superior craftsmanship and profound humanity. Named a Best Book of 2020 by The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Guardian, winner of the 2021 Walter Scott Prize, this is Mantel's literary Michelangelo moment—a sublime tapestry of meticulous research, enthralling characters, and expressionistic language that reflects the looming tensions between those who hoard power and those who crave it in every era.