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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Books Hilary Mantel Wins the Booker Prize

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 2:27 PM

Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize Tuesday night, becoming the first British writer and the first woman to win Britain’s most prestigious literary award more than once.

Mantel took home the 50,000 pound ($82,000) prize for “Bring Up the Bodies,” the second volume of her planned trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. Her first volume, “Wolf Hall,” won the Booker in 2009 and was a bestseller in the United States.

I haven't read either book in Mantel's trilogy, but Wolf Hall is sitting in the stack of books I will take with me the next time I get a goddamned vacation. This award for part two is another incentive to dig in.

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I haven't read either book. They sound great. But has the Booker ever before been given to one book and then to its sequel? Not just twice to the same author, which would seem an extraordinary honor, but twice to the same continuing narrative? Can this second book really be so awesome as to deserve this incredible recognition, when presumably there were other stellar candidates?

Posted by Warren Terra on October 16, 2012 at 2:33 PM

IT'S SO GOOD!!!

Posted by DrewCourt on October 16, 2012 at 2:40 PM

Wolf Hall is a fantastic book, and certainly worthy of the Man Booker Prize. I'll read anything that is even nominated. I skimmed Bodies, maybe I just lost interest in the subject. It was well-written, but I didn't feel the same connection with the characters and suspense of the first book.

Posted by biffp on October 16, 2012 at 2:45 PM

They're both remarkable books; I expect good things from the last in the trilogy, too. Who knew Cromwell could be so very human?
Huffington Post says, "Mantel fought off competition from Will Self, who had also been a strong favourite in the build up to the award with Umbrella, Tan Twan Eng for The Garden of Evening Mists, Deborah Levy for Swimming Home, Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis and Alison Moore who was shortlisted with her debut novel The Lighthouse." I haven't read any of them, so I can't speak to the stellar-ness of their candidacies, @1. Can you recommend any of them?

Posted by alight on October 16, 2012 at 2:45 PM

Swimming Home certainly sounds interesting.

Posted by biffp on October 16, 2012 at 2:50 PM

Loved the story and characters in both books (they really bring to light/make sense of the various political machinations of the middle Tudor years) but I have to say she has a major pronoun issue. It's like she wanted to write in first person but felt she had to do third - so she compromises by always referring to Cromwell as he/him/his. Even when there is another man in the sentence who would even more plausibly be the he/him/his in question. Drove me crazy.

Posted by Catastrophe on October 16, 2012 at 3:01 PM

I'm reading Wolf Hall right now. I'm finding her clipped style a little difficult to get used to, but I'm finding the characters thoroughly engrossing, the more so because, to this amateur medieval & renaissance historian's eyes, her work seems meticulously well researched. She achieves the difficult task of bringing the characters and events of Henry's reign vividly to life while remaining true to the sources.

Posted by Corydon on October 16, 2012 at 3:10 PM