Product Description

# Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd (30 April 2009) # Language English # ISBN-10: 0007230184 # ISBN-13: 978-0007230181

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #433 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

About the Author
Hilary Mantel is one of our most important living writers. She is the author of eleven books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Giving Up the Ghost, and, most recently, Beyond Black, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize.

Customer Reviews

Worthy but no need for it to be so confusing
Have finished this book and am sure it's very worthy of all the accolades but I really found this quite a hard slog and I'm quite a prolific reader. The story is really interesting but I am so glad to see other reviewers on here that had the same horrendous problem of trying to follow who was talking whenever there is any dialogue. Fair enough to refer to Cromwell as "he" if you're going to stick to that and use it exclusively, but when you use "he" for other people during the same conversation, it's really confusing and I found myself having to re-read paragraphs containing dialogue (as a result this took me so much longer to read than normal and I feel like I've read it 3 times). Obviously am not one to comment on such a good writer but it would have been so much more of a pleasure (rather than a chore) to read if it had been either written in first person or clearer reference used as to who is talking.

A magnificent tale
Anyone who paid attention in history classes at school will need little background to the events of Wolf Hall. The key events of the story take place over just less than a ten year period from the 1520s to the 1530s. Mantel has taken what is, supposedly, Britain's best loved history topic, Henry VIII and his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, marriage to Anne Boleyn and the resulting split with Rome and has melded it into a compelling story.

She has obviously had some of her work done for her - the key dramatic events, characters, plots and intrigue are fairly heavily based in fact, but what Mantel has done is to breathe life and substance into the historial figures to make them loveable, hateable, complex characters. At the centre of her book stands Thomas Cromwell, a man from humble origins who rose to unprecedented power in England as Henry's chief minister. Cromwell is beautifully portrayed and his personal relationships, be they loving, tragic or political are fascinating reading. The relationships with Wolsey and More in particular are executed wonderfully (no pun intended in the latter case).

My only grumble with the book were that some events are included, but skated over in short passages and other events are included, but drag a little. This is probably an inevitable part of a historical novel covering such a long period of time; you can't simply leap forward 2 years and avoid the need to understand certain intervening events. However, whilst this slows the pace of the book in places, I enjoyed the book so much that it didn't particularly spoil it for me (indeed, those who prefer a fast paced novel are probably not going to enjoy Wolf Hall).

The book ends shortly after the death of Thomas More, and I can't be only one who wonders (and hopes) whether we might yet see a second, "decline and fall" book. I'd certainly love to read it.

Fictionalised history
Hilary Mantel is a talented writer. Her characters really come alive. Her dialogue is never less than interesting (though, as other reviewers have noted, sometimes one's unsure who's speaking)and to my surprise I found I quickly overlooked the anachronism of her characters speaking modern not pre Shakespearean English. I didn't find it hard going as other readers seem to have done. In fact, taken as pure fiction it's a good read.

But it isn't pure fiction. It's English history from 1527 to 1533 - Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII's divorce and remarriage, the break with Rome, Thomas More's execution - well worn stuff covered I don't know how many times in print and even on TV but you don't win the Man Booker prize by cranking out a mere rerun. It takes a bit more originality and here's where Mantel's been really creative. She has hit on the device of reversing the historical roles: Cromwell, the ruthless, unscrupulous doer of Henry VIII's dirty work (as he appears in the history books) becomes an efficient modern meritocrat with the management skills it takes to stay one move ahead of the competition while Thomas More, his protagonist (recognised as a saint by the churches of Rome and England) gets a relentless character assassination as a sadomasochistic religious fanatic who personally tortures heretics in the cellars of his house (a story that in real life More categorically denied). It ends with More's execution, but it has to end there. Otherwise all Mantel's creativity couldn't gloss over what followed immediately on from the policies Cromwell introduced - the judicial murders, the wholesale looting of the church (surely the biggest robbery in English history), the villagers butchered in Nazi-style reprisals against anyone objecting to Cromwell and Cranmer's religious innovations and so on.

So, as fiction I'd give it 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 but as a piece of slanted fictionalised history I think 2 would be generous.Wolf Hall