WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel

Samantha_Kathy, here's what I posted when I read Wolf Hall a few years ago. It got me started reading lots of other books by Hilary Mantel>

I can only add to the chorus of praise for this wonderful book. I am not usually a reader of historical novels, so I can't say how Wolf Hall compares to others, but for me it transcends the genre (although the history was fascinating) and is really a story of power, intrigue, family, and -- above all-- character and a world in the middle of dramatic change. Hilary Mantel is an amazing writer who captures the feel of the times, the essence of the people (and there are lots of them, so the list at the beginning of the novel is essential), and the intellectual debates with such beautiful and unobtrusive prose that I felt totally enveloped in the early 16th century and the minds of Cromwell and the others. I will now look for Mantel's other work.

Sorry to be so late in replying, and perhaps this discussion is no longer active. I am reading Wolf Hall, slowly as I also have to read other books at the same time. Hilary Mantel is in a category of her own. Her accomplishing in writing this book is staggering. Obviously I'm not alone in having this opinion, since she won the Mann Book Prize for it.

The discussion is as active as anyone wants to make it! I agree, it's a wonderful book. Slow reading is what it needs, I think; It is so dense, it took me quite a few days to read even though I was on holiday and reading fairly intensively, but it's amazing how she takes us inside Cromwell's head and makes him sympathetic, in his complex and changing world in which he has so often been characterised as the villain.