Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I realised the other day that I had not written a review for a while and then I remembered that my current read was Wolf Hall and that kind of explained it . It’s taken me a while to get through this and I don’t think it’s quick, light read at all. This isn’t a criticism; this is a book which consciously, knowingly, requires time and focus and a very deliberate style of reading and I think, in many many ways, more than rewards you for the effort and focus and time you give it. There’s a kind of conscious elegance to it, a very subtle way of it determinedly telling its story in a very particular manner, and absolutely no reluctance about doing that. And again, this isn’t criticism nor is it negative. As a whole, Wolf Hall is something to be looked at in the same breath as Piranesi, perhaps, or even Ducks, Newburyport, a book that kind of takes the expected form of its thingness and remakes it into something very new, very clear, very sharp, very itself and rather brilliant in the process.

So, to practicalities. This is the first part of a series covering Thomas Cromwell and his rise in the world. I am not particularly knowledgeable on this period other than the obvious (divorced! beheaded! died!) but I come to these books after watching the TV adaptations and that has helped in keeping some handle on all of the Thomas’s. This Wolf Hall is strange and elegant stuff and in a way, it’s the story of Cromwell keeping everything secret and playing everything, even so that the reader might not be quite aware of what’s happening, until all of a sudden they are. I mean, the man knows what he’s doing and even when he doesn’t, he kind of still does.

When I finished this, I had this sort of moment of going “so this is it, and he hoodwinked me in the process” and that is so interesting to me, that Mantel can inhabit this man’s world so precisely and so fully that every inch of it is convincing and impactful and can be experienced in such an unquestionable manner as a reader. Mantel knows precisely where she is and she knows precisely what she is doing and there is such a comfortable confidence at play here, such confidence, that even when I am lost or confused or trying to remember who is who, I still marvel at it, the craft of it all.

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