Mantel Pieces

MANTEL PIECES
Hilary Mantel
HarperCollins

REVIEWED BY TRUDIE BATEMAN

Any fan of Hilary Mantel is going to find themselves comfortably at home amongst this collection of ‘‘reviews, essays and pieces of memoir’’.

Covering a period from 1988-2017, during which Mantel was a contributor to the London Review of Books, the selections here track remarkably well with the author's extensive body of work.

The pieces on Theroigne de Mericourt, Marie-Antoinette, Robespierre, and Danton will almost certainly pique interest in Mantel's hefty novel on the French revolution, A Place of Greater Saftey. Likewise, the review of Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches seems good preparation for her own darkly comic novel about spiritualism, Beyond Black.

Readers looking to fill a Tudor-shaped void after the end of the Cromwell novels will find some solace with pieces on Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, and Margaret Pole.

Hilary Mantel will have us believe her reviewing style is ‘‘more brisk and breezy than scholarly’’ and while she has an acerbic dry wit, she is no slouch in critiquing some serious-minded history books.

Authors play fast and loose with Tudor history at their peril. Like a Tudor detective, Mantel ferrets out the slightest whiff of historical overreach whilst managing to land some sly burns not once, but twice, to the hapless novelist Phillipa Gregory.

I admire Hilary's ability to be both deliciously caustic and intimidatingly intellectual across a surprising breadth of topics. On Madonna: ‘‘Anderson's book begins, as it should, with the prodigal, the violent, the gross. But what do you expect? Madonna's wedding was different from other people's.’’

The memoirs of John Osbourne: ‘‘A ferociously sulky, rancorous book.’’

But it was a lecture for which she attracted the ire of a nation. Royal Bodies, a delightfully provocative and arguably the best essay in an outstanding collection. It demonstrates what happens when you dare to mock the royal canapes and lightly poke fun at the institution of monarchy.

The current royal family does not have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment.

For ardent fans of Mantel's works, this collection is a must-read and also a boon for the aspiring book reviewer.

Trudie Bateman is a former scientist and University of Otago student, now avid reader