I heard about this book from Rosamunde_Reads on Instagram and as someone who generally enjoys English history, I thought I would enjoy this book!

Mantel Pieces is basically a collection of essays – mostly book reviews but with at least one memoir piece – written by Hilary Mantel for the London Review of Books. Most of the books are about British history (no surprise here) and some pieces that stand out to me are:

• The Murder of James Bulger – what does a murder and the children’s crusade have in common? The question ‘at what age are children responsible for the things they do, especially the horrific things they sometimes do’.
• Britain’s Last Witch – on Helen Duncan’s life, and which reminded me of the chapter on folk magic from The Book of English Magic
• The Hair Shirt Sisterhood – on women saints and suffering. I was reminded a little of The Nun’s Tale by Candace Robb here, probably because of the description of how some of these women sought out suffering
• Marian Devotion – on how the cult of Mary developed (and this is a book I would want to read)
• On Charles Brandon – this essay stood out to me because I realised that while I enjoyed reading the review, it made me not want to read the book

Each review is pretty long but very comprehensive. If the topic is related to something Mantel experienced, she normally starts the review with an anecdote, and then rather comprehensively recaps the book, smoothly adding her opinions in along the way. Many times, other books are also referenced when relevant and I can see how each review takes a lot of work. Honestly, I really liked reading those reviews and it’s making me want to try this style – I doubt I can do it for all books, but maybe I should try to write one long-form review a month where I really engage with the book.

Sandwiched between each review is a letter or email or some form of communication between Mantel and the London Review of Books. I didn’t really understand what this was for – they didn’t seem to provide a lot of context to the pieces. Perhaps it was a “behind the scenes” sort of thing but I ended up skipping most of them (especially if it involved handwriting because I find it hard to read my own handwriting, let alone others).

Overall, I really enjoyed this collection! Because the reviews are so in-depth, I learnt quite a bit about various subjects. And I also found this to be a good opportunity to engage with longer essays – I find that I don’t have much patience for them when I’m reading on a computer screen, so reading on a kobo was a good alternative.