Hilary Mantel, In Memoriam

"But surely the whole point of a notebook is to pull it apart...Perforation is vital – more vital than vodka."

Hilary Mantel was my quarantine companion.

This past spring, felled by Covid, I began to read through the stack of novels I had accumulated but never quite got around to reading. This is how it came to be that I finally read Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light.

It was with great sadness that I read of Mantel’s death, from a strok…