Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel

"Bring up the bodies!" the famous cry to bring the accused of London's Tower to stand trial, words uttered the days of Anne Boleyn's trial, as well as the cases of those accused of treason alongside her. Hilary Mantel won a second Man Booker in 2011 for this novel, steeping even greater anticipation upon a novel retelling such a dramatic turn of events; Henry VIII can not divorce a second wife yet would be rid of the tempestuous Anne Boleyn, despite the great lengths he resorted to in making her Queen of England. I will spare you more back story; yet Mantel breathes furious energy into a histoical moment that has become 'old hat' in modern fiction.

Mantel's characterizations are even more important in the follow up novel to Wolf Hall, as Anne's fiery personality goes under the microscope as the mousy Jane Seymour attracts the King's attentions. And so Thomas Cromwell is called in again, to make legal the parade of women it may take Henry to get a son, an heir to the throne. Tensions burn even hotter in this novel, and the pacing increases as Mantel tells this particular story with even more dialogue, relishing in the various personalities and their power-mongering ways. It makes for a more accessible read than Wolf Hall did, with less background and slow simmering, but all of the elegance in phrasing of the 

Master Cromwell shows his first signs of fear, as he knows that his loyalty to the King will not protect him from all of the ambitious courtiers, especially when he moves to put the grasping Anne aside the only resounding way possible: execution. 

The political witch hunt as Mantel portrays it may not have every last historical detail. It's an overwhelming chess board of names and titles, and I personally don't believe that Mantel's fiction loses any power or integrity by dropping some subtle elements of the history. Better to pace it just so, flesh out wholly what is represented, than become tedious, especially as so many have commented that they found Wolf Hall such work. 

Man Booker vs. Me

Well, Wolf Hall was only the second Man Booker Prize winning novel to be read in the year 2013. What can I say, I've been slacking.

I talk a lot about these award winning novels, post to my Facebook account the longlist announcements (ya, nerd) and keep up with the whole process as best I can via the news feeds at www.themanbookerprize.com! I personally find the whole thing super exciting!

It's not that I assume that the books that win this, the Orange Prize, or the Pulitzer Prize are legitimately going to be my favorite new releases. It's just that working my way through the award winners of these prizes has introduced me to authors, topics, and themes that I may not have experienced without the guidance these lists supplied me with.

So, where in the scope of the Man Booker list is this blogger? Well, let's see!

1969	P. H. Newby	Something to Answer For	Not Read	United Kingdom
1970	Bernice Rubens	The Elected Member	Not Read	United Kingdom
1970	J. G. Farrell	Troubles	Not Read	United Kingdom  Ireland
1971	V. S. Naipaul	In a Free State	Not Read	United Kingdom  Trinidad and Tobago
1972	John Berger	G.	Not Read	United Kingdom
1973	J. G. Farrell	The Siege of Krishnapur	Not Read	United Kingdom  Ireland
1974	Nadine Gordimer	The Conservationist	Not Read	South Africa
	Stanley Middleton	Holiday	Not Read	United Kingdom
1975	Ruth Prawer Jhabvala	Heat and Dust	Not Read	United Kingdom  Germany
1976	David Storey	Saville	Not Read	United Kingdom
1977	Paul Scott	Staying On	Not Read	United Kingdom
1978	Iris Murdoch	The Sea, the Sea	Not Read	Ireland  United Kingdom
1979	Penelope Fitzgerald	Offshore	Not Read	United Kingdom
1980	William Golding	Rites of Passage	Not Read	United Kingdom
1981	Salman Rushdie	Midnight's Children	Not Read	United Kingdom  India
1982	Thomas Keneally	Schindler's Ark	Not Read	Australia
1983	J. M. Coetzee	Life & Times of Michael K	Not Read	South Africa
1984	Anita Brookner	Hotel du Lac	Read	United Kingdom
1985	Keri Hulme	The Bone People	Not Read	New Zealand
1986	Kingsley Amis	The Old Devils	Not Read	United Kingdom
1987	Penelope Lively	Moon Tiger	Read	United Kingdom
1988	Peter Carey	Oscar and Lucinda	Not Read	Australia
1989	Kazuo Ishiguro	The Remains of the Day	Read	United Kingdom
1990	A. S. Byatt	Possession	Read	United Kingdom
1991	Ben Okri	The Famished Road	Not Read	Nigeria
1992	Michael Ondaatje	The English Patient	Not Read	Canada
	Barry Unsworth	Sacred Hunger	Not Read	United Kingdom
1993	Roddy Doyle	Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha	Not Read	Ireland
1994	James Kelman	How Late It Was, How Late	Not Read	United Kingdom
1995	Pat Barker	The Ghost Road	Not Read	United Kingdom
1996	Graham Swift	Last Orders	Not Read	United Kingdom
1997	Arundhati Roy	The God of Small Things	Read	India
1998	Ian McEwan	Amsterdam	Read	United Kingdom
1999	J. M. Coetzee	Disgrace	Not Read	South Africa
2000	Margaret Atwood	The Blind Assassin	Read	Canada
2001	Peter Carey	True History of the Kelly Gang	Not Read	Australia
2002	Yann Martel	Life of Pi	Read	Canada
2003	DBC Pierre	Vernon God Little	Read	Australia
2004	Alan Hollinghurst	The Line of Beauty	Read	United Kingdom
2005	John Banville	The Sea	Not Read	Ireland
2006	Kiran Desai	The Inheritance of Loss	Not Read	India
2007	Anne Enright	The Gathering	Not Read	Ireland
2008	Aravind Adiga	The White Tiger	Not Read	India
2009	Hilary Mantel	Wolf Hall	Read	United Kingdom
2010	Howard Jacobson	The Finkler Question	Read	United Kingdom
2011	Julian Barnes	The Sense of an Ending	Read	United Kingdom
2012	Hilary Mantel	Bring Up the Bodies	Not Read	United Kingdom

**

So, out of forty four years of awards... I've read thirteen. Yikes. Curse that tie in 1974!! I've got some work to do! That's the glorious thing about this plan of mine, though. I've got a lifetime of both global and homegrown literary treasures to go to. Have you subjected yourself to any awesome book challenges?

Also, has anyone read any of the novels selected for the Man Booker's 2013 longlist? Check out my review of one of the selections, A Tale For the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki! Is it a coincidence, or some literary foresight yours truly is privy to? Yah... let's not get delusional!

**Thanks to Wikipedia for this absurdly informative chart. Anyone else notice that there are no winners from a South American nation, nor any from countries on the Asian continent, except India?