Big Book #2: The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel

For my second big book of #BigBookSummer, I read The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel, the concluding volume of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy. It chronicles Cromwell’s life from the time from Anne Boleyn’s beheading to his own comeuppance. My initial feelings were not positive, but sometimes I think that a book’s membership in a series can taint my opinion of it because I’m comparing it to the other books in the series. On that level - the middle book - Bring Up the Bodies - was the best, the shortest, and most focused, as it is structured around Cromwell’s involvement in the romance and the, um, subsequent falling out (to put it lightly!) between King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The Mirror & The Light, however, did not have the benefit of a singular salacious story to propel the reader forward. I’ve given myself a week to digest this book a bit more, and I still think it was too long and rather hard to get through. It was not for me. I remember thinking that in both of the first two volumes initially, but then the books always picked up and I couldn’t put them down. There were several passages and dialogues in this book that I loved and thought this book was picking up for me, but these glimmers would always fade away. 

I thought it was interesting to learn about the operational impact of the Reformation, specifically how the lands and wealth of abbeys and monasteries were disbursed after Henry VIII had most of them shut down. There was a silver lining after all - the historical part of the historical fiction was solid.

On to the next big book! 

It me