![]() Mantel creates suspense through depicting frightening events, and characters for whom the reader feels empathy and therefore care whether they live or die, and by making the turning points and decisive moments of the characters, matters of life or death. Getting away from purely emotional reactions, I judge whether a novel is boring or not (and therefore the right length or not) by considering the level and sustainment of suspense. If I were to simply voice my opinion and disagree with these negative criticisms of the novel, I would not be a better critic. Some critics have said that the novel is “too long” (whatever the ideal length is that they had in mind), that she could have said everything in 200 or 300 pages, and that the story is boring because is is too long. The length of the novelĪn obvious aspect of the novel is its length – impossible to ignore at more than 900 pages. ![]() ![]() Previously, I wrote about the the extended metaphor that Mantel uses in the novel, that of the mirror and the light. In this post I continue to analyze the long and deeply nuanced historical novel, The Mirror and the Light. ![]()
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