Look, I need to complain about something first. Hilary Mantel has ruined me for other historical fiction. Completely ruined. I finished Bring Up the Bodies three days ago and I've started two other audiobooks since then. Couldn't get past chapter one of either. They felt like cardboard cutouts after spending fourteen hours inside Thomas Cromwell's head. The only other audiobook that's left me this spoiled for everything else was Nightingale: A Novel, which ruined me for WWII fiction the same way Mantel's ruined me for Tudor England.
This is the problem with listening to genuinely great literature while grading sophomore essays on The Great Gatsby. The cognitive whiplash is brutal.
The Prose Deserves to Be Heard
Here's what Mantel does that drives me slightly insane in the best way: she writes in this close third person that feels like you're wearing Cromwell's skin. "He, Cromwell" becomes a kind of incantation. At first—and I remember this from Wolf Hall—it's disorienting. Who is "he"? Which he? But then something clicks, and suddenly you're not reading about Tudor England. You're scheming through it.
Simon Vance understands this. He doesn't perform the text so much as inhabit it. His Cromwell is measured, calculating, with this undercurrent of dry humor that surfaces at exactly the right moments. When Cromwell observes the court's machinations, there's this bone-dry quality to Vance's delivery that made me actually laugh out loud during a faculty meeting. (Principal Martinez, I was definitely not listening to an audiobook during your presentation on standardized testing metrics. Definitely not.)
The character voices are distinct without being theatrical. His Henry VIII has weight and menace. Anne Boleyn sounds brittle, desperate, still fighting even as the walls close in. But Vance never lets the voices overshadow the prose itself. This is crucial. Mantel's sentences are too good to be buried under vocal gymnastics.
When History Becomes a Slow-Motion Train Wreck
We know how this ends. Everyone knows how this ends. Anne Boleyn loses her head—literally—and that's not a spoiler, it's a history class. So why does this book work as well as it does?
Because Mantel makes you forget you know. Or rather, she makes the knowing worse. You're watching Cromwell orchestrate Anne's destruction with this terrible efficiency, and you can't look away. The pacing is deliberate—some might say slow, and honestly, they're not wrong—but it's the slowness of watching someone walk toward a cliff edge. You want to shout. You can't.
I listened to most of this on my morning walks along the lakefront with Denise. She finally asked why I kept stopping to stare at the water. I couldn't explain that I was processing the scene where Cromwell visits the condemned men. The way Vance reads those passages—quiet, almost gentle—made the horror land harder than any dramatic reading could have.
This is why we still read the classics. This is why historical fiction matters. Not for the costumes and the court intrigue, but for moments like that. Mantel forces you to sit with the violence that power requires.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
I've seen some reviews calling Vance's narration "flat" or "lifeless." I get it. I do. If you're coming from thrillers with breathless pacing and constant vocal fireworks, this will feel like a different species of audiobook. It is. That's the point.
Vance reads at the pace Mantel writes, which is to say: deliberately. He trusts the silences. He lets the sentences breathe. My students would absolutely hate this. They'd call it boring within ten minutes. (They also think Hemingway is boring, so their judgment is suspect.)
But if you appreciate prose as performance art—if you believe the author chose those words and that rhythm for a reason—this is the audiobook for you. Skip it if you need constant action or prefer listening while multitasking; this demands your full attention. I listened at 1.0x because anything faster would have felt like sacrilege.
One warning: this is book two of the trilogy. You could technically start here, but you'd be missing the foundation Mantel lays in Wolf Hall. Cromwell's rise makes his power in this book more meaningful. His memories of his wife and daughters, referenced throughout, hit harder if you've lived through those earlier chapters with him.
Class Dismissed
I don't throw around the word "literary" lightly. My grad school professors beat that impulse out of me. But Bring Up the Bodies is literary fiction in the truest sense—it does something with language that most books don't even attempt. And Vance's narration honors that ambition.
Is it for everyone? No. Is it the kind of audiobook you put on while half-paying attention at the gym? Absolutely not. But if you want to understand why Mantel won the Booker Prize for this—twice in the same series, which is basically unheard of—give it your full attention.
My 47 podcast listeners are going to hear about this next week. Mom, try to stay awake for this one.
