Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

The novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel has stopped me in my tracks over the last month or so. Gosh I enjoyed reading it and I miss it now that I’m finished. The historical saga set in Tudor England went on night after night and I didn’t want it to end. I’d long to dive into bed, curl up with this big fat book and be transported to another place and time.

Some observations I noted about Wolf Hall as I went along:

• It is the most dense novel I’ve read in years - rich weavings of characters, dialogue and plot in a period of history many of us have read about since childhood … what was that rhyme on Henry V111’s wives? Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived
• I’d never thought about the roles played by various influential people at the time, particularly Thomas Cromwell who is the main character in the book

• I loved Thomas for all his public machinations and manoeuvrings and his personal humanity

• The wonderful sense of time and place - from jewels adorning garments to flesh burning at the stake

• Some new perspectives of history - the role of Henry More for example, a religious zealot of another era

• Women as possessions to be traded for personal and political purposes

• The vulnerability of the population to the violence of life

Watch a video of Hilary Mantel talking about Wolf Hall

Fay Weldon has praised Hilary Mantel as the living author she most admires and so on her recommendation I put Hilary’s books on my ‘must read’ list. Now I definitely want to read them all.

26 July 2010/On The Bookshelf

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