He is not in the habit of explaining himself. He is not in the habit of discussing his successes. But whenever good fortune has called on him, he has been there, planted on the threshold, ready to fling open the door to her timid scratch on the wood. That's a portion of the last paragraph of the sixth page of Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies . It's the second book of her Cromwell trilogy. I read the first book first, then the third. This book, the second, is when Anne Boleyn dies. There is hardly any surprise in the factual events of the story; much has been written about it. But it is Mantel's brilliant writing that draws me to her work. She crafts perfect sentences, if there are such things. I was at National Bookstore (SM Gensan) this morning. I visited the neglected spot on the right corner of the store, where books on sale were displayed. I saw a young man, probably in college, read the first chapter of Grit. He kept looking at the price tag, wondering, perhaps
