Hilary Mantel

This fictional portrait of Henry VIII's scheming aide Thomas Cromwell — the first volume of Mantel's celebrated trilogy — won the Booker Prize in 2009. “'Wolf ...

But for now I am thinking of the poignant ending of “The Mirror and the Light,” the final book in the Cromwell trilogy. (For her part, Mantel said she was “bemused” at the suggestion that “the police should interest themselves in the case of a fictional assassination of a person who was already dead.”) Having helped effect the deaths of so many of Henry’s enemies, Cromwell finds that he is to meet the same fate. He feels for an opening, blinded, looking for a door: tracking the light along the wall.” As her agent, Bill Hamilton, said upon the news of her death: “She had so many great novels ahead of her.” There is a lot more to read, and reread. Though the themes of women suffering from pain, isolation and domestic weariness recur in her fiction, she didn’t make her own history the focus of her persona; she was not one to seek pity. For me, her books show that great literature, the kind that marries meticulous craft and deep understanding of human nature, can require work on the part of the reader. It was a shock to see her speak in person and realize how funny she was. Dead for more than 400 years, reduced to caricature as a thug and a brute in the famous Holbein portrait that hangs in the Frick Museum, Cromwell here feels shimmeringly alive, full of pathos. There were nine other novels, demonstrating her ability to write in a range of styles about various subjects and in various time periods. She brings great precision to her writing, as opaque as it sometimes feels, and asks the same of us in our reading. At first, the prose is disorienting.