Heartbreaking. Immersive. Bleak. Beautiful prose, slow, drawn out, and very culturally specific. Both this work and Wolf Hall shared these qualities. It takes someone with exceptional mastery of story telling to write a book like this without boring the reader or losing them to the darkness, or the specificity of the subject matter. I think she’s incredible. I was both relieved and very sad it was over. How did Mantel know to capture trauma so achingly well, and the mind’s jumbled wanderings and self-sabotaging routes? Did she know monsters like these? I’d say some of the characters were flat, but honestly they felt real as well. She captured portraits that feel like people I’ve known and it makes me so sad.
As painful as it would be, I’d read this again and suspect there are tons of layers to uncover. It’s a masterpiece.