The Mirror & The Light is a historical novel by English writerHilary Mantel. Following Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, it is the final installment in her trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the powerful minister in the court of King Henry VIII. It covers the last four years of his life, from 1536 until his death by execution in 1540. Mantel's twelfth novel, and her first in almost eight years, The Mirror & The Light was published in March 2020, receiving widespread critical acclaim and enjoying brisk sales.
Plot
The Mirror & The Light covers the period following the death of Anne Boleyn in 1536. It documents Cromwell’s ascent to the pinnacle of his riches and power, followed by his fall from royal favour and his public execution at Tower Hill in 1540.
Publication
Although Mantel had originally hoped to publish the book in 2018, it did not appear until March 2020. Dismissing speculation that the novel had been delayed due to writer’s block, distractions caused by stage and screen adaptations of her previous novels, or because she couldn’t bring herself to write Cromwell's execution scene, Mantel said that the project had simply been difficult, adding: "But that’s not an explanation that has any news value, so people are looking for a dramatic story of the whole process breaking down.” When it was published in the UK on 5 March 2020, bookstores opened at midnight to sell the title. Initial UK sales were brisk, with over 95,000 copies sold in the first three days. Henry Holt and Company published the US edition five days later, on 10 March 2020.
Reception
The Mirror and the Light received mostly laudatory reviews from critics. The New York Times called it "the triumphant capstone to Mantel’s trilogy," the Financial Times called it "majestic and often breathtakingly poetic," and the Washington Post called it a "masterful finale." The Times Literary Supplement called it "some of the most complex and immersive fiction to have come along in years," while the Guardian hailed it as a "masterpiece" and called Mantel's Cromwell trilogy "the greatest English novels of this century." The Los Angeles Times called Mantel "unique among modern novelists in her ability to make the past as viscerally compelling as the present," USA Today said that "every page is rich with insight," and the Wall Street Journal called her Cromwell trilogy "a brilliant engagement with the exercise and metaphysics of power in 16th-century Europe." However, the New Yorker criticised the lengthy novel, calling it "a bloated and only occasionally captivating work." The Mirror and the Light was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction.
