If You Have Not Read Hilary Mantel's Historical Novels

 The Hedgehog Review published David K. Anderson's Hilary Mantel and the Historical Novel Remembering the author who reinvigorated the historical novel.should get you to read them:

What do the dead ask of us? In a 2015 lecture at the Frick Collection in Manhattan, where Hans Holbein’s portrait of Cromwell hangs opposite that of Thomas More, Dame Hilary explained, in her impossibly delicate voice, that her goal was “to persuade us to look at the world behind [Cromwell’s] eyes.” She succeeded, rooting the imagined psychology of her Cromwell in a deeply realized historical context from which it seems to spring up of necessity. We feel the distinctive pulse of his motivations and understand the hurts, hopes, and presuppositions that spur his decisions. We come to see that this man, whose bones have lain beneath a chapel floor near the Tower of London for nearly five centuries, was like us in his inward parts—and we are invited to remember that the same is true of all those others who have bequeathed this world to us.

Reprinted from The Hedgehog Review 25.1 (Spring 2023). This essay may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission. Please contact The Hedgehog Review for further details.

I read the first two while in prison. The third I have here to read. I enjoy historical novels, so I might be the wrong person to say this: Mantel wrote great books that you should read.

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