A collection of essays, communications , articles and cultural collisions from The London Review Of Books. There are twenty pieces in total collected from three decades of living and writing.Twas my enjoyment of her Wolf Hall Trilogy, among other bits and pieces by her, that drew me in this collections direction. The subject matter within ranges all over the show, from book case shopping in Jedah to er, getting into bed with Madonna. Blimey. Some of the pieces are built on substance as mired in reality as a writer of her faerie otherness is presumably can get. She observes with precision, writes with precision and wields her imaginative prose with precision.
I flipped to the chapter in which she writes about Christopher Marlowe, who has been on my mind off late. Probably because of seeing three versions of the Doctor Faustus myth. The echo of the man permeates this creation and I hoped she might bring some of the clarity she brought to the lives of the Tudor figures in Wolf Hall to peeling back the masks worn by this mysterious man. She tip toed through the fog of history to present a new vision of a man history painted as unredeemable, Thomas Cromwell. Affording that figure an all too human face. She seemed sure of where she wanted to go, if not always so sure how to get there. The identi-fit of history createsc a confusing portrait of Christopher Marlowe. He emerges on stage in a play populated by people made of smoke and mirrors. It is not entirely clear if we are even seeing his true face, they all resemble him but would the real one please step forward please. With positively trying to pin this slippery man down one runs the risk of queering the pitch, so to speak.
Reading up on what is known about Christopher Marlowe I find myself approaching a portrait of the man, or a picture proporting to be the man, and finding it vivid and life-like. At least at first it appears so, but the cl;oser one gets the less defined it becomes, until at least one accepts it as more an im pression than a portrait. Hilary Mantel wisely offers us little more than a crimes scene sketch, enough to partially identify him, but not enough to file a charge.
So it is, the mystery continues,fuddled with the many footprints of those who have gone before, tainting the crime scene, making answers as elusive but as compelling as ever.
