Let’s get this out of the way, I did not finish Wolf Hall. Not for lack of trying, I promise. But I got 75% of the way through, and was trying to force my way to the end before it was due at the library, when i just realized that I wasn’t enjoying or even absorbing anything I was reading, so what was the point?
Anyway, Wolf Hall is about Thomas Cromwell, a somewhat mysterious figure from English history. He rose from humble beginnings to become a powerful advisor in the court of King Henry VIII. Wolf Hall, the first of a trilogy, covers the period of time when Henry VIII was looking to be granted a divorce from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn. It was a trying and treacherous time, full of palace intrigue.
One of my main issues was Mantel’s unorthodox style. Her use of pronouns gave me headaches. She would write a sentence about another character doing something, and then the next would begin with “He says” or something similar, but the “he” in question wouldn’t refer to the same character, it would refer to Cromwell. Conversations between characters could be maddening to follow as a result. It didn’t help that there were a lot of characters, roughly half of them with the first name Thomas. This includes, of course, the more well-remembered Thomas More. Mantel seems to have been motivated by a desire to tear down Thomas More from the pedestal he was put on by writers like Robert Bolt in A Man For All Seasons. I’ve read some criticism of Wolf Hall on that point from actual historians, but I’m not interested enough to do my own investigation into the matter.
The fight over Henry VIII’s first marriage is a well-known piece of history, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it makes for a good story. The back and forth arguments over the matter get really tedious over time.
I don’t really have much more to say. I know a lot of people really love both this novel and the whole trilogy, so I’m sorry to say that this was a major disappointment to me, and I definitely will not be continuing to the other books.