"What makes rumor so liberating is the novel’s dependence on unknowability. The novel follows the same logic as gossip — the possibility of leaks must always be present. Narratives — both grand and parochial — flourish when no one knows anything absolutely. It makes sense then that so many have placed Bring Up the Bodies in the lineage of spy fiction; Mantel’s narrative pacing begs the comparison, as does her experimentation with textual secrets and lapses. Wendy Smith in The Washington Post compares Tudor absolutism to 20th-century totalitarianism, where authority manages a line between imagination and reality, thoughts and actions. Pondering the Vatican, Cromwell has thoughts not unlike those of a Graham Greene character: “Intrigue feeds on itself; conspiracies have neither mother nor father, and yet they thrive: the only thing to know is that no one knows anything.” More than one reviewer has compared Bring Up the Bodies to Arthur Koestler’s political allegory Darkness At Noon (itself the second volume in a trilogy)."
This is good, Bringing Up The Bodies was so great.
(Source: janehu)
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