Wolf Hall (edition 2010)

Born the son of a blacksmith and forged as a soldier and cloth merchant, Thomas Cromwell is clever, tough man with a dark reputation. A hard worker with a knack for reading people, he has worked his way up to secretary of Cardinal Wolsey, the right-hand man of the King of England. However, when Henry VIII wishes to divorce his Spanish queen and marry Anne Boleyn, Wolsey’s inability to bring fast results leads to his downfall, opening a power vacuum into which Cromwell easily slides. Cromwell is a dangerous man to have as your enemy, but the mercurial king he serves is volatile, unpredictable, and unafraid to destroy those whom he raises to fame and fortune. Wolf Hall, the first book in a proposed trilogy, covers Cromwell’s life from his childhood through to the execution of Thomas More.

Ah, Wolf Hall. People have been telling me to read this book for years. “Yes, it’s another book about the Tudors,” they say, “but it’s different from all the ones you’ve read before.” That it is. Most of the books I read focus on the great romances of Henry VIII’s wives, the wooing, wedding and eventual disposal of his various queens. This does not.

One of the nice aspects of a book told from the viewpoint of Thomas Cromwell is really get to enjoy the political turmoil of the period. It’s common knowledge that Henry VIII dissolved monasteries and claimed their assets for the crown, but from Cromwell’s perspective this is for the best. The monks are not tossed out onto the streets, but moved to other religious houses run by better managers. It’s consolidation, not destruction, and therefore justified. I don’t know if there’s any truth to the assertion, but it’s certainly a different way of viewing the actions of the Crown at that time.

This turnaround is also shown in how various characters are portrayed. Thomas More isn’t the sympathetic, principled intellectual from The Tudors or Man for All Season - he’s a religious fanatic who enjoys torturing heretics. Anne Boleyn’s shrewish and manipulative, clever but not all that likeable. No one is perfect, or even all that good. It’s a darker, dirtier England – but one that is much more sympathetic to Cromwell, who usually lurks in the background of Tudor novels like a villainous vulture.

The style of the book is also quite different. Thomas Cromwell’s story is told in the third person present tense. At times, the story jumps around – a thought is suddenly abandoned but picked up again a few paragraphs later. Chronological order is rough and often abandoned for flashbacks. Cromwell is also rarely identified by name – usually, it’s just “he” and “him” over and over – which can get confusing, as can the sheer size of the cast and the commonality of names. Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Wyatt, and goodness knows how many other Toms pepper the narrative. But after a while, you get used to all of it.

I really enjoyed Wolf Hall, but it was definitely more challenging than the average Tudor novel. It’s a dense, wordy book that requires concentration and dedication to finish, but I thought the story was well worth the time invested. ( )

totally disappointing, very jerky style, did not finish the book ( )

I'm infatuated. Well, that's a strange word to use for WOLF HALL and Hilary Mantel, one of the sharpest, most thorough historical fiction writers I've ever encountered. But I AM infatuated--with her prose, which is absolutely the most brilliant writing I've read in years. I love the sentences in this book. And when every sentence you flow through is sheer delight, that adds up to a delightful book. Not to mention the faster-than-lighting pacing of dialogue and story, the complicated character which is Thomas Cromwell, the quirky, close third-person point of view which allows you into a stunning mind, the tension of knowing just enough about Henry VIII to anticipate disaster but not enough to know exactly how disaster unfolded...in other words, add to those gorgeous sentences a thrilling plot, and I can't put the book down.

If that's not enough, Mantel also explores the theological tensions of the day: The heresy of Martin Luther, the waning of the pope's influence in England, the Bible's translation into English, and the beginnings of the Church of England. The church's corruption becomes reason for the king to occupy church property. At first, Mantel makes these conflicts deeply personal; we see Cromwell as a faithful but smart, questioning reformer who acts from his faith. As he gets closer to the crown, Mantel neglects this aspect of his being. But this is my only criticism of an otherwise exceptional novel.

I could pull a paragraph from anywhere in the book and you'd be wowed. Here's one from the end, referring to the heresies of Thomas More:

They hurry in; the wind bangs a door behind them. Rafe takes his arm. He says, this silence of Moore's, it was never really silence, was it? It was loud with his treason; it was quibbling as far as quibbles would serve him, it was demurs and cavils, suave ambiguities. It was fear of plain words, or the assertion that plain words pervert themselves; More's dictionary, against our dictionary. You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.

AHHH..... ( )

You do get over the whole 'him' and 'he' thing that so many people have mentioned after a while, although it's a good few hundred pages before all those sentences and paragraphs starting in that fashion, cease being mental tripwires. It's like some mental equivalent of running through dense woods or undergrowth: You try to get into your usual rhythm but every few paces there's another one to trip you up, leaving you mentally flailing on the floor in shock and confusion. Or at least skipping back to the previous page to try and figure out who this mysterious guy is whose just crashed into the scene.

Once the mind hurdles are mastered (remember: 'HE' is almost always Cromwell) the book settles down into a nice piece of historical fiction. And nice it is. Not bad, but not great, nice. I have to admit I struggle to see what all the excitement is about. Wolf Hall to me just seems another good example of it's genre, nothing exceptional.
( )

You do get over the whole 'him' and 'he' thing that so many people have mentioned after a while, although it's a good few hundred pages before all those sentences and paragraphs starting in that fashion, cease being mental tripwires. It's like some mental equivalent of running through dense woods or undergrowth: You try to get into your usual rhythm but every few paces there's another one to trip you up, leaving you mentally flailing on the floor in shock and confusion. Or at least skipping back to the previous page to try and figure out who this mysterious guy is whose just crashed into the scene.

Once the mind hurdles are mastered (remember: 'HE' is almost always Cromwell) the book settles down into a nice piece of historical fiction. And nice it is. Not bad, but not great, nice. I have to admit I struggle to see what all the excitement is about. Wolf Hall to me just seems another good example of it's genre, nothing exceptional.
( )