Michael O'Donnell

Michael O’Donnell is the author of the novel Above the Fire. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and other publications. O’Donnell has been a member of the National Book Critics Circle since 2005. An attorney by profession, he lives in the Chicago area, where he practices law. He earned his bachelor’s degree with distinction from Indiana University and his law degree magna cum laude from Boston College.

Recently I asked O’Donnell about what he was reading. His reply:

I have been re-reading Hilary Mantel's monumental Wolf Hall novels about the court of Henry VIII. Just now I'm halfway through the second volume, Bring Up the Bodies. I first devoured these books as they came out beginning in 2009. This second time through, I am really savoring them. Partly this is due to the reading experience. I treated myself to the Folio Society editions, which are beautifully bound in cloth and richly illustrated. But mainly it is due to the brilliance of the prose.

Just the other day I laughed aloud at a passage about the Duke of Norfolk, one of Mantel's most outrageous characters. He often tries to be the alpha male even in the same room as the King of England, yet he emerges as a blustering windbag. Mantel writes that "he looks like a piece of rope chewed by a dog, or a piece of gristle left on the side of a trencher." A wonderful detail is that, for all his puffing, Norfolk is afraid of ghosts--one of Mantel's lifelong preoccupations. He particularly fears Cardinal Wolsey, whom he hounded ruthlessly until Wolsey's death. Norfolk locks up tightly at night, fearing that the late cardinal might "ooze through a keyhole, or flop down a chimney with a soft flurry like a soot-stained dove."

It has been a hard few years for losing great writers. Martin Amis, Cormac McCarthy, Russell Banks, and Peter Raban all died this year. Yet no writer's recent death hit me quite as hard as Hilary Mantel's in 2022. She passed away too young, and with her we lost one of literature's finest voices. The consolation when a great novelist departs is that her books stay on our shelves, and in our hands.

Visit Michael O'Donnell's website.

Q&A with Michael O'Donnell.

The Page 69 Test: Above the Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue