Fludd: A Novel

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The women liked to stand on their doorsteps. This standing was what they did. Recreational pursuits were for men : football, billiards, keeping hens. Treats were doled out to men, as a reward for good behaviour: cigarettes, beer at the Arundel Arms. Religion and the public library, were for children. Women only talked.

Was it hard to write Thomas Cromwell’s death? And now the books are all out there, do you miss him as a presence and grieve for him or is it a relief to have said goodbye?Not a word, not a word of love, Perhaps, she thought, he does not love in the ordinary way. God loves us, after all, He manifests it in cancer, cholera, Siamese twins. Not all forms of love are comprehensible, and some forms of love destroy what they touch.” In a 2013 interview with The Telegraph, Mantel stated: "I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people. [...] When I was a child I wondered why priests and nuns were not nicer people. I thought that they were amongst the worst people I knew.”

In two paragraphs, Mantel has given us a complete sense of an entire community. And the pacing of the sentences! Perfection. Unlike many of her Literary fellows, Mantel never writes to show off. She doesn't have to. Patricia T. O'Conner is the author of ''Woe Is I,'' a grammar guide, and ''Words Fail Me,'' a book about writing.

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Between him and Mrs. Agnes Dempsey, his housekeeper, a decision was made to bury them in shallow graves behind the garage. So St. Apollonia, whose teeth was all pulled by the Romans, St. Gerome with his little lion, St. Agatha, carrying her breasts in a dish, St. Cecilia with her portable organ, St. Ambrose with his hive, and several others, were to be mass murdered. However, he preferred to call it a mere calculated measure. When I wrote the final words, it was only to begin a fresh stage of rereading and revising. And almost at once I began working on the stage play – in collaboration with Ben Miles, who will play Cromwell. Then there is a TV series to come. So Cromwell is part of my present, not my past. She has some laugh out loud moments and I particularly enjoyed her description of the Catholic church: he tells her, was ''releasing spirit from matter,'' freeing ''the soul trapped in circumstances it can no longer abide.''''How do I know that it is not you who is the

Some readers have complained that Fludd loses its momentum in its third act. It’s true that the story grows somber as Mantel shifts her perspective from Father Angwin’s battles with the bishop to Sister Philomena’s more existential struggle with life as a nun. In my opinion, Mantel’s decision to focus on Sister Philomena improves the story. It takes what would be a passing comedy and lends it greater depth. As Mantel makes clear before she begins the novel, Fludd is based on a sixteenth and seventeenth century alchemist, so the story must involve transformation. Some readers may find Sister Philomena dull–I did not–but, by becoming involved with her, Fludd himself is changed. Fludd confesses that he normally ignores women, but he is drawn to Philomena. Through Philomena, then, Mantel takes a deus ex machina-type character, the mysterious and unknowable Fludd, and illuminates his humanity. The novel is the better for it.Christ died to free us from the burden of our sin, but he never, so far as [Sister Philomena] could see, lifted a finger to free us from our stupidity.”