Realpolitik 
 [NOTE: This review may appear to tell a lot of what happens in the book, but any events given here are recorded British history. What matters is not so much the story that Mantel tells, but the perspective from which she tells it.] 
 Hilary Mantel's latest novel, a huge and meticulously detailed book that won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, is about the rise to power of Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Born the son of a blacksmith, fleeing to continental Europe to escape his father's abuse, he spends almost 20 years abroad as a soldier of fortune, then household servant, moving above-stairs as his talents are recognized to become an accountant, scholar, banker, lawyer, and in general a man who knows how to fix things, by fair means of foul. Mantel references this long apprenticeship only in retrospect; after a vivid scene with teenage Thomas and his drunken father, the book leaps ahead three decades to 1527, when Cromwell is 42 and using his talents in the service of Cardinal Wolsey, the most powerful man in England next to the King. It is presented as an intensely loyal relationship, with much affection on both sides. Cromwell is also shown as a devoted husband and father--a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a figure usually portrayed as King Henry's hard-hearted hatchet man. One of the delights of the book is simply the time spent in the company of such a thoughtful and dedicated human being. 
 When Wolsey is stripped of his powers in 1529, Cromwell enters the service of the King, managing to soften his treatment of his former master while furthering Henry's own needs, a remarkable juggling act in itself. Soon he has become the King's closest adviser. Henry is seeking to end his 20-year marriage to Katherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, a court lady of much lower rank who he hopes will bear him a son. (She didn't, but her daughter would reign as Elizabeth I.) Wolsey had tried to negotiate an annulment from Rome, but failed. Cromwell the lawyer, now dividing his time between the court and parliament, suggests the alternative course of having Henry simply declared as the head of the English Church. It is the first step towards Anglicanism, although Henry himself remained an adherent of the Catholic rite, and this was a still a time when practitioners of the more radical Protestantism preached by Luther and others on the continent were burned at the stake as heretics. 
 Mantel does not shy from the fact of these executions and tortures, but nor does she rub our noses in them. Similarly, although she is as frank about bedroom matters as anything else, there is hardly a whiff of the bejeweled prurience normally associated with historical romance. Anne, who is presented as a self-centered manipulator, keeping Henry on a string for more than seven years, finally marries the King and admits him to her bed. It is remarkable that, although Mantel comes close to portraying Anne as the villain of the piece, she treats the interviews between Anne and Cromwell with respect and courtesy on both sides. Her writing is as free from melodrama as it is from bodice-ripping, and the many lesser romances throughout the book (some even involving Cromwell himself) are treated with sincerity and warmth. 
 Mantel prefaces the novel with a five-page list of characters, like a theater program. This is very useful, but even so it can be hard to keep track. Women change their names in marriage, courtiers are awarded titles of nobility, and the store of given names is remarkably small: there are 5 Henrys, 4 Marys, 4 Annes, and 11 Thomases! At 532 large-format pages, the book is also very long. Too long? Perhaps, but who is to say what could be cut? The novel gives the best description of Realpolitik that I have ever read, as a series of painstaking negotiations backed up by meticulous attention to practical detail; scant that, and the entire texture is lost. Very little actually happens in the book, but how it happens is the point. 
 We know from history that Henry fell out of love with Anne Boleyn, and beheaded her in order to marry Jane Seymour. Within a few years, Cromwell would also fall out of favor and be executed in his turn. Mantel hints that there might be a connection between these events, and in the very last line--which explains the rather elliptical title--she points towards a continuation that might well be developed in a sequel [and indeed was!], but doesn't need to be.