My husband, bless him, knows very well that the presents I like best are books. For my birthday the first year we were married, he picked out Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, and for my first Mother’s Day, it was Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel. Forget brunch and overpriced flowers: I’m all about Cromwell and Anne Boleyn.  As a bonus, he gave me enough time away from my beloved son to devour the book in two sittings.

Since it appears I’ll be waiting a while for the third installment, my last birthday brought with it A Place of Greater Safety (very long, and to be embarked upon when my beloved son decides to sleep through the night and past 5:00a.m.) and Fludd. [And the new biography of Leonard Cohen, which I can’t wait to get to, and The Song of Achilles, so good I read it twice, and a few other gems.]

Fludd is a slim volume (under 200 pages), with a cover design I can’t quite get behind, but it’s a gem of a novel. Ms. Mantel regards her characters with an unsentimental but ever-interested eye, transforming, like her creation Fludd, the frustrated men and women of cold and grimy (and fictional) Fetherhoughton in subtle and not-so subtle ways. Ms. Mantel’s mordant but quiet wit suffuses the novel, which I highly recommend.