Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

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Mantel’s epic leads us through a turbulent period in British history, taking Thomas Cromwell as the central figure. We begin by learning about his difficult childhood before he heads to the continent and comes back well respected. There will be times when other characters try to shame him for his humble origins but he is confident in his abilities and the good standing that his work and efficiency places him in. He’s not wrong - he moves in the very highest of circles, easing the way for Henry VIII to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. This is undoubtedly a complex time - there’s a five page character list at the beginning of the book, which I completely forgot about after the first hundred or so pages so was relying entirely on the text of the novel to keep myself oriented. Thankfully, I wasn’t coming to the period fresh, if you’re new to the story you’ll probably find yourself flicking back and forth a lot.

Cromwell doesn’t have the best reputation in history but Mantel attempts to humanise him here. His difficult family life as a child and the death of his wife and daughters early in the novel allow us a glimpse of a softer side. Here we see Cromwell grieving, and are reminded just how much the threat of death weighed on everyone at the time. If you were lucky enough to survive or avoid contagious diseases, the constant changing of religious preferences of the monarchy meant that you were at risk of execution, and for women of course, death through childbirth. We see throughout that those unwilling to shift their beliefs in line with the current preference from above are punished. Some of the most harrowing and evocative passages are the descriptions of executions. 

We see the fallout of the King’s desire to divorce and remarry and the struggle of those in positions of power to shift their mindset to protect their lives. We hear much about Anne and Henry’s relationship and the rumours around the fading love and lust between them when her first child is not a boy. Knowing how their story ends, you feel for Anne. We see how love and politics intertwine and the negotiations that created this infamous story. We witness also how family are discarded when not seen as useful, and the jealousy of the new queen of anyone connected to her predecessor. It’s a difficult world for their unfortunate offspring to grow up in.

An aspect that I also found interesting was the brief but moving examinations of how some of the characters responded to their impending deaths. We see one choose to accept his fate when offered the opportunity to escape, others going to their end relatively oblivious. What is clear throughout is that your fortunes can change on a whim, and those who feel comfortable in their positions can very easily fall from grace. 

Despite the often serious nature of the content of the book it is littered with little humorous moments, as well as very human ones. Cromwell’s reaction to Holbein’s portrait of him, in which he is described as looking like a murderer, sets him on a short self-reflection, in which he realises he is more vain than previously thought. An interesting read, it’s quite dense and yet reads smoothly. Tackling such famous figures in fiction is no mean feat, and although not everyone will agree with Mantel’s interpretation of some of the characters, it is clearly well researched yet avoids feeling heavy.

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Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellmann

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Ellmann’s epic stream-of-consciousness novel takes the reader into the mind of an Ohioan mother of four. Her narrative is interrupted every hundred pages or so with passages about a mountain lion’s separation from her cubs. This provides a nice juxtaposition, as well as offering an alternative view of humanity. Buried within the main narrative, amid musings on popular culture, politics, police brutality, and all the general concerns and anxieties, is a story of an ordinary life with some very real emotional challenges.

One of the main themes of the novel is motherhood - the narrator’s feelings of incompetence and unworthiness, as well as her grief and guilt over the loss of her own mother. The lion narrative also draws on the devotion of a mother and the lengths she’ll go to in order to protect her offspring. Our narrator, who remains unnamed throughout, worries about not being able to look after her children properly, of being neglectful. She variously acknowledges the importance and difficulty of parenting, and questions whether she should have become a mother. ‘the fact that making food for people is actually a highly pressured, skilled, responsible job, just like motherhood, but nobody seems to notice,’ gives us a sense that she feels strongly that making a living baking pies while looking after her children is not valued by society, and this feeds in to her own sense of self-worth. That she can acknowledge that her occupations are important and demanding gives the reader some hope that she has the potential to see value in herself.

Anxiety plays out for her in almost every aspect of her life, but perhaps never more so than when it comes to her children. She admits to feeling shy around them and being afraid to tell them what to do, but it this line on people deciding to try for a baby, that really resonates, ‘the fact that nobody ever tells them that the terror of what could happen to your kids cripples your life, the fact that all mothers are going through this all the time, I think; but we never talk about it,’

Fear of death and loss hangs heavy over her, the repeated mantra of having been broken by the death of her mother is present throughout. She talks of not being able to love fully since because she can’t bear to go through that pain again. Her own cancer journey contributed to the sense of fragility of life and yet she offers herself no compassion, feeling instead that she failed her family during her treatment and recovery. Reading this during 2020 made the fears and anxieties all the more pertinent and difficult to read and sit with.

Alongside the personal worries and dramas are a lot of references to awful real life events - school shootings, assault, and a myriad of other violent crimes. Some topics are familiar to the international reader but many may not have made the news outside of the U.S. It had me researching names and events that I hadn’t come across before and sharing some of the despair.

The impact of human activity on nature is also present and plays along neatly with the lion’s tale, although it is often the negative impact on humans with the likes of the proliferation of PFOA in almost everything that captures most of the narrator’s attention. She reminds us all of the way people carelessly poison the planet, and that it’s being destroyed for all living creatures, ‘the fact that the good news right now is that animals don’t yet know we’ve wrecked the place, or they don’t know we did it at least, or they’d come after us, red in tooth and claw, the fact that it’s actually pretty lucky they don’t blame us for it,’

The climax of the novel builds, the lion sections appear more frequently as the two lives seem on the cusp of overlapping. Despite there being some dramatic events, the end of the novel feels somewhat anti-climactic as the narrator continues in her never-ending monologue, her sense of inadequacy still intact. For some, this technique will be happily received as we bid farewell to the characters, safe in the knowledge that their lives will continue without our prying eyes. It feels as though her general anxiety and disappointment in herself turns every event, whether it’s a lemon drizzle cake that didn’t rise properly, or a brush with death, into another reason why she is not good enough.

This is a beast of a book, and one that will not be universally loved. The constant repetition of the phrase ‘the fact that’ can be grating and yet at other times you almost don’t notice it. It is, however, a book that will really make you think, and is an interesting glimpse into life in America. The references may be specific but the themes are recognisably relevant to the general human experience. An interesting read, but possibly not one to pick up if you’re trying to soothe your mind from the ills of the world.

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The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

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Atwood’s much anticipated sequel to the increasingly popular The Handmaid’s Tale opens up the view of Gilead with three perspectives – Aunt Lydia, Daisy, who has grown up in Canada, and Agnes, a girl who has lived her whole life in Gilead, and although devout does struggle with the restrictions imposed on her. Set roughly fifteen years after the previous book, we are given a glimpse into the fall of the regime, as well as further insight into the early days and the hardships the founder Aunts had to suffer. Aunt Lydia, in her former life, had been a judge and worked with women’s charities, a far cry from the horrors she inflicts in her new role. At her own admittance she chose her own safety over that of others. Her account is written with a future reader in mind that she believes will judge her for the decisions she’s made. She points out though, that they will never know what they would have done in her place. Atwood giving her the compassionate background that she does really hits home that anybody can do terrible things, she wasn’t inherently evil, and any one of us put in that situation may well have chosen the same path.

Lydia shows herself to be cunning and tactical from the moment of her acceptance into Gilead as a founder Aunt, being careful not to give away too much of herself but carefully storing potentially useful facts about the others. This calculated behaviour has made her almost untouchable, the Commanders fear the secrets she knows. With time she seems to have become less willing to dole out unnecessary physical punishments where others still delight in it, she sees herself as quietly looking out for the handmaids. It’s also commented that the new waves of aunts lack the hardness of the founders – they haven’t had lives before Gilead, did not experience the brutal initiation suffered by them, and know of the outside world only in theory.

It is interesting to hear the perspective of a Gilead daughter. Their view highlights how much has been denied them in not teaching them to read. They are taught subservience through ignorance, reinforcing the repeated theme of ‘knowledge is power’. Even in their innocence they know enough to be afraid, are taught to consider the handmaids as sluts, a painful label for women who are repeatedly abused. There is shame of having been born of a handmaid. The girls are taught to fear men and not to provoke them into lust, and they internalise this, becoming overrun with anxiety when marriage is arranged for them, many choosing suicide over life as a wife. It seems nobody is truly happy in Gilead. Men dispose of wives leisurely but even the most powerful Commander lives in fear, constantly on guard. Nowhere is completely private, and nobody is safe.

For Daisy growing up in Canada, Gilead is taught in school but can never be fully understood from the outside. She is shocked that her parents are civil to the Pearl Girls who pass by, sent from Gilead to bring back converts. It seems bizarre that the government allows such migration, but it is made clear that war with Gilead has not gone well for other countries. Self-preservation again plays a role.

A sequel that feels less subtle than The Handmaid’s Tale. The twists are not hard to see coming and everything is laid out in plain sight. The final sections are fast paced but the culmination of the story is over quickly. Everything’s a little too neat and predictable and at times it feels as though Atwood is playing to fans of the TV show. I would have preferred more separation. Not a bad read but not as original or revolutionary as some of her other books. 

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