The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • N8

N8 Books a A 2 9 2 0 2 0 Books ilary new novel, Mirror and the brings to a close the impossible story of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from relative obscurity to profoundly shape his times as chief counselor to Henry VIII. Mantel won the Man Booker Prize for both of the previous books in the hugely best-selling trilogy, and up the The English writer was the first wom- an to win that award twice. BOOKS: What are you reading? MANTEL: Marlon 2009 nov- el, Book of Night which is set on a Jamaican planta- tion towards the close of the 18th century. a tough, brilliant read that will haunt my imagination for a long time. It may be a mistake to read it in the evenings because working its way into my dreams.

BOOKS: What is your favorite kind of book? MANTEL: If writing a novel, I read mostly nonfiction. Fiction re- quires a lot of giving on the part and when writing myself, only available to my text. But I do read poetry. I enjoy the young Hilary Mantel on reading and re-reading BIBLIOPHILES as likely to curl up with a Jane Austen as to read a new By Wendy Smith GLOBE CORRESPONDENT is an angry novel, a blast of feminist outrage against a toxic culture that breeds racism and violence against women. The narra- tive hurtles forward with urgency of a thriller, and it emulates the darkest spy fiction by making it painfully ap- parent that the good guys are at least as likely as the bad guys to be pun- ished.

Elizabeth mingled love and fury for her native West Texas electrifies her prose; despite its grim subject matter, her first nov- el is exhilarating to read, because the characters are so alive, the drama that engages them so compelling. It begins in the aftermath of a rape, on the morning of Feb. 15, 1976, as 14-year-old Gloria slips away from passed-out Dale Strickland and stumbles across an oil patch miles from the Odessa drive-in where she unwisely got into his pickup truck the night before. When Mary Rose opens the door of her farmhouse later that morning, she sees a girl so badly beaten surprised she had the strength to knock. the girl says when asked her name; she has sworn never again to use the first name her rapist again and again, those long hours while she lay there with her face in the Dale turns up looking for his after little but his manner quickly becomes men- acing when clear Mary Rose buying it; she holds him off with a ri- fle until the sheriff arrives.

Wetmore unfolds the increasingly ugly reaction to arrest and Mary decision to testify against him through close-up accounts of sev- eral female lives. They provide vivid snapshots of an oil-boom economy and the society it spawns, with men trapped in backbreaking, dangerous jobs and women trapped in marriages to men whose rage is frequently di- rected at them. die all the thinks 10-year-old Debra Ann, young- est of protagonists. fights or pipeline explosions or gas And the women? when one of the men kills we are informed by a Greek chorus of waitresses that chronicles the odyssey of Karla, barely 17 with a new baby when the novel begins. WETMORE, Page N9 In love and fury in West Texas aith and superstition have long been partners in hu- intellectual test kitchen, and nothing they have concocted is as varied, colorful, and addictive as our last course: the after- life.

Bart D. Ehrman chronicles these two forces at work in and Hell: A Histo- ry of the in a fulsome sweep through the biblical, philosophical, and lit- erary canon. The fact that we die has sparked a never- ending stream of speculation. Why do we suffer? If there is a benevolent God, why are the virtuous crushed while tyrants triumph? Importantly, why live a good life if there are no rewards? A recent Pew Research Poll reports that 72 percent of Americans agree that there is a literal heaven, and 58 percent an actual hell. Yet, Ehrman, an authority on the New Testament, surprises readers early in this book with the assertion that these views be found in the Old Testament and they are not what Jesus himself The Old Testament thinkers did not con- ceive of an afterlife.

Nor did they subscribe to a belief in the immortality of the soul. Death, for the authors of Job, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Samuel, was final, unin- teresting, and unredeemable. Jesus himself did not believe that a person would go to heaven or hell immediately upon death. If the prototypes of eternal torture and Elysian Fields come from the Bible, where did they come from? Though it would take centuries to arrive at the images we hold today, Ehrman argues that it was Plato who most influenced later thinking, EHRMAN, Page N9 DAVE CUTLER FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE Floating on a cloud, or flames licking at your feet? HEAVEN AND HELL: A History of the Afterlife By Bart D. Ehrman Simon Schuster, 352 pp, $28 VALENTINE By Elizabeth Wetmore Holt, 320 pp, $26.99 BY KATHLEEN HIRSCH GLOBE CORRESPONDENT BY AMY SUTHERLAND GLOBE CORRESPONDENT poet Helen Mort, who reminds me of my childhood terrain in the north, and Michael McCarthy, the poet-priest who had a sharp but compassionate eye on human folly.

I also read plays. BOOKS: Which plays? MANTEL: I read Shakespeare on a loop. With contemporary writers, I set myself a project. currently reading Martin black, shocking, and funny plays. Next up, I mean to read Tom Coast of trilogy.

I saw all three plays in one day in 2002. I am partly deaf so I get more out of a play if I read it too. BIBLIOPHILES, Page N9 A new book looks at howwe see the afterlife.