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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

 




I have seen this book on numerous occasions when I have been in the library, but I have always passed on by and left it sitting on the shelf.  I was partly put off by the sheer size of it, but I also had a sneaking feeling that I would find it a little too high-brow for me and would struggle to get to the end.

Maybe it was because I have recently had a run of historical novels, or maybe all the focus on King Charles' coronation has put me in the right frame of mind, but three weeks ago I finally found the courage to take it home.  It wasn't as difficult to read as I thought it might be, and I was very much helped by the list of characters thoughtfully provided at the start of the book.  There are a lot of people to get to grips with but Mantel is careful to jog the readers memory if someone suddenly crops up again after a gap of several hundred pages.  The book runs to exactly 650 sides of small print, so it is a bit of a project, but the research is so meticulous that you can't help but improve your knowledge of the Tudor period.

When I took the book home, I expected it to cover the whole of Cromwell's life but I now find it is the first in a series of three, and If I want to see the plot-line through to the end, I shall also have to read Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror.  The next two books look just as hefty but I feel as though I should make the effort and try and appreciate this great body of work.

I think Mantel has done a fine job in giving personalities to the historical characters and Cromwell comes across as a caring man even though he has forged a path through to the highest office in the land.  King Henry VIII is blustering in strong but we see him also as a human with all the frailties that go with that.  In this respect, the reader sees a side of the King that very few of his subjects would have known - if indeed that was what he was really like!

There are little glimpses of an academic style of humour in the text, mostly through Cromwell's private thoughts, but for the most part, the content takes a heavy tone because of the constraints made by history.  The period surrounding the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn is stained with blood as people were tortured and executed in dreadful ways, and very few members of the court walk away untouched by the events.  This was a time when the rules of the land were changed completely and anyone not on the side of the King had to dealt with quickly and severely.

I didn't find this as entertaining as my last historical read by Phillipa Gregory, but I intend to press on with the trilogy because it is worth reading and Hilary Mantel has certainly made history come to life. 

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