Liars and Saints

  Just a note in appreciation of Hilary Mantel, who died too soon. One of my favorite scenes in Mantel's work is the moment when young Mantel rejects a career in teaching. Paraphrasing: "I noticed something distressingly cyclical. Clever girls grow up to be teachers....who teach clever girls who grow up to be teachers....who..." I also like a memory she shares of the petty tyranny of classrooms. "My teacher observed me and asked,  Do you want me to hit you with this ruler ? ....And I couldn't begin to formulate a response...." Finally, I love Mantel's exciting antihero, Thomas Cromwell, who gets rid of Anne Boleyn simply because the murder is convenient. Cromwell needs to invent a grievance against Anne, so he decides that she has been adulterous. He casts his various enemies as the illicit boyfriends; these enemies once helped to bring down Cromwell's mentor, Cardinal Wolsey. "If they're not guilty of sleeping with Anne....they're guilt...

There is some interesting Hilary Mantel backlash right now. Mantel famously wrote "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies"--and won two Booker Prizes--and all the world has waited anxiously for "The Mirror and the Light." Some critics love "The Mirror and the Light," and a few do not. The NY Times said it was painfully slow. In the New Yorker, merry iconoclast Daniel Mendelsohn actually said, "Mantel reported all she needed to get out in the first two volumes." (Yikes!) Even some of the warm reviews teasingly mention moments of boredom--and my heart stops when I see these paragraphs. (I borrowed the book and skipped right to the end, which people label "BEST PART." Spoiler: As Cromwell marches to his death, he thinks, Others have managed, and I can, too. In his very final moment, he is searching for any available light. I liked that.) In happier times, Mantel said, "I state what the character SAID, and I ...

(5) "The Witch Elm," by Tana French. I complain about French often, because I think her style is too windy. But I always read her books. She has a way of blending a tricky plot with an unreliable narrator. So you don't know if the world she is describing is crazy, or the narrator has sort of lost his mind, or both. I'm thinking of "In the Woods." It's interesting to me that "The Witch Elm" is the first of French's novels not to follow the "my-new-narrator-is-linked-to-the-preceding-book" trend. A fresh start! I'm all for that. (4) "Nate Expectations," the final installment of the Nate trilogy, by Tim Federle. Each title has been outstanding: "Better Nate than Ever," "Five Six Seven Nate." I actually wonder if Federle chose the name "Nate" in part because it would yield such valuable puns. (3) Additional seasons of "Hannibal"? I took a while to get adjusted to this show. For...