Hillary Mantel: Wolf Hall (Winner of the Booker Price)

[Sunflower81]

Hi!

Does anyone know this novel? I have seen it in a bookshop, but I am afraid it is very brutal. Does anyone know it?

Best wishes
Christine

 

[rzcrystalpalace]

Hi there, this is my first post, so please forgive me any stumbles over board etiquette. I read Wolf Hall a few months ago and found it really involving. Brutal isn't my lasting impression of it, although there are certainly moments of brutality - the opening, for one. But the book is full of variety, with frequent changes of tone, and the occasional hard, raw or savage detail is offset by wry humour, rich & vivid description, and above all a real humanity and complexity of character, especially in the central figure of Thomas Cromwell. Mantel draws you in to the detail of some scenes/events so that you can't wait to find out the next twist of fate, or politics - but also leaves much in the shadows to puzzle and challenge you as a reader. I'd heartily recommend it as a read and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

 

[Peder]

Good review, and welcome! :flowers:

 

[rzcrystalpalace]

Thanks Peder, look forward to exploring the forum some more.

 

[beer good]

This may be the best book I've read so far this year (well, Karen Tei Yamashita's I Hotel may be a close second). Wolf Hall is so beautifully multi-layered, at once a simple soap opera (the same, and yet very different, story was televised as The Tudors after all) and a hard-hitting look at the shift between medieaval and modern society, the foundation (and the adaptation) of all the power structures and political (from the personal to the national) trickeries that still echo today. The novel as a mnemonic cabinet, history as a bodily function (or the other way around), every section soaked through with conflict and the weight of everything that came before and since.

When he was a small child, six years old or about that, his father's apprentice had been making nails from the scrap pile: just common old flat-heads, he'd said, for fastening coffin lids. The nail rods glowed in the fire, a lively orange. ‘What for do we nail down the dead?’

The boy barely paused, tapping out each head with two neat strokes. ‘It's so the horrible old buggers don't spring out and chase us.’

He knows different now. It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives.

I can't wait to get going on Bringing Up The Bodies, but I'm making myself put it off so I don't have to wait forever for the third part of the trilogy...

 

[anu]

I read Wolf Hall last year and while picking it up I had no idea that it would introduce me to the wonderful world of Historical Fiction. In fact I earlier scoffed at the idea of reading boring history facts. The history did make me struggle with War & Peace earlier.

But, Hilary Mantel did create a wonderful story. The brutality of a father towards his own son made me sit up and helped me form a bond with Cromwell very early in the book. As I did not know much about Tudor history, most of the events were absolutely new and interesting for me.

But, the narration was not really faultless. The continuous use of 'He' confused me, as I could hardly understand whom does it signify. Thankfully the multilayered story covered up the shortcomings and I did enjoy it quite a lot.

 

[Tony119]

Hi there, this is my first post, so please forgive me any stumbles over board etiquette. I read Wolf Hall a few months ago and found it really involving. Brutal isn't my lasting impression of it, although there are certainly moments of brutality - the opening, for one. But the book is full of variety, with frequent changes of tone, and the occasional hard, raw or savage detail is offset by wry humour, rich & vivid description, and above all a real humanity and complexity of character, especially in the central figure of Thomas Cromwell. Mantel draws you in to the detail of some scenes/events so that you can't wait to find out the next twist of fate, or politics - but also leaves much in the shadows to puzzle and challenge you as a reader. I'd heartily recommend it as a read and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Yes the Wolf Hall series are first rate novels. You get a wonderfully deep and subtle reading of the character of Thomas Cromwell. Martel presents him as a forward looking man fighting the corrupt backward residue of feudalism. While very unsentimental he is gentle and compassionate to the weak and needy - not a sly ruthless schemer as he's often presented. But Martel also gives a wonderfully subtle and detailed study of the transition from old to modern ways of thinking, in daily life and in politics, and of course in religion, with slow and complex rise of Protestantism.