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Wolf Hall (Hardback)
Short Description for Wolf HallWinner of the Man Booker Prize 2009 'Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.'
Full description- Publisher: FOURTH ESTATE LTD
- Published: 30 April 2009
- Format: Hardback 672 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Historical Fiction
- ISBN 13: 9780007230181 ISBN 10: 0007230184
- Sales rank: 3,415
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Reviews for Wolf Hall
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Top review
A (650) page turner
How often can one say that a large novel, and Wolf Hall is 650 pages, is "un-put-downable". This novel draws you into the period, and into the story, as Avatar's 3D imagery draws the view into the film.
Starting with a brutal beating that made the reader cry "stop it", the novel takes one through the Byzantine politics of the Tudor court, with a multitude of historical characters thoughtfully explained in a thematic glossary at the front. The characters were all very real, and none charicatures, even though many were larger than life in the history books: indeed Hilary Mantel seems to take pleasure in ignoring the preconceptions of simplified history to give us an alternative viewpoint of many of them, including Mary Boleyn, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey and the hero of the novel, Thomas Cromwell himself.
Lest any reader thinks this is dry textbook history, think again! It's often said that life is stranger than fiction, and this this is a story that would be incredible, if the historical background had not been so thoroughly researched and detailed. The story of the rise of a man, literally from the gutter, to such prominence was mirrored by the rise of Steerpike in Mervyn Peak's "Gormenghast" trilogy.
This is the first Hilary Mantel novel I have read, but it won't be my last, and I was delighted to read she's now working on the sequel, to complete the life of Thomas Cromwell. Through this book, I am now a fan of Hilary Mantel, and Thomas Cromwell. by Sir George-Marcus Moore -
On the shoulder of history
Wolf Hall (by Hilary Mantel) surprised nobody by taking out the Booker Prize for 2009. I was reading it while the Booker committee deliberated. I like to think that this might have affected them in some small way...
Actually, I was a little surprised to hear that it won the Booker. On my completely unobjective and inattentive survey, it's the longest novel to get the gong in quite some time. It seems they generally they don't award literary honours to long books. I guess when you're a literary critic and you've got a whole pile of aspiring fiction in your library-bag the delight of something well-written and not tedious is virtually irresistible. I wonder also, whether long novels inevitably fall under the suspicion that the writer might have enjoyed churning the wheels of authorial invention, may have actually found it relatively easy... That would seriously mess with our visions of tortured genius.
Having said that, I can't imagine that Wolf Hall was an easy novel to write. On the contrary, it is an incredibly and painstakingly well-researched recreation of an historical character. The novel follows the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, the organisational and legal genius behind Henry VIII's civil and ecclesiastical reforms. (As a side note, there are more Thomases in Wolf Hall than you could reasonably swing a sword at - but that is the fault of Tudor England, not Hilary Mantel. Who would have thought that so many men named â??Thomas' would be involved in shaping modern Anglophone society?)
Tudor Britain was a society gripped by a series of transformations within which the lineaments of our contemporary world began to take shape. It is the lives and loves of some of the men and women in these pages that effected a legacy of change to which our current global culture continues to be heir. Wolf Hall is a chance to meet these characters and dwell with them in the daily weave of life. It's a rich experience. You shouldn't for a moment expect a hagiography though. Mantel leaves us in no doubt that Cromwell was both a â??Bible Man' and also a ruthless political operator. Something of a cross between Tony Soprano and an Archbishop (I leave you to decide which is which).
Wolf Hall is not just an historical novel, it is a novel about history. It is about the ways in which our paths are directed by choices other people made, the way our lives are intertwined with characters who walked ahead, sometimes out of sight, but whose presence still vibrates in the air as we pass. Mantel achieves this through a series of very daring effects: she situates the reader on the shoulder of Cromwell, not giving us a first person narrative, but free access to his thoughts and feelings. For a while we know Thomas, we live closer to him, than even his beloved wife. It is the most intimate form of â??indwelling'. This is an opportunity to experience a knowledge of the world given through transmissible experiences rather than directly collated our own nervous encounters. Wolf Hall takes fiction seriously.
But perhaps too seriously? Wolf Hall will never be accused of insulting the reader's intelligence. I've been studying and reading books about this period of history for a few years now, and I honestly think Mantel assumes more Tudor history than she communicates. But this is also the effect which makes Wolf Hall brilliant. Mantel has consciously written a novel in which the tension that drives the narrative doesn't come from the narrative itself, but what the reader will bring to the narrative.
The secret of Wolf Hall lies in what the book isn't about: Wolf Hall. by Dan
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