Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

So Now Get Up

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

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Oh, Wolf Hall. So many great and beautiful moments. So many frustrating, stagnating moments. So easy to appreciate. So impossible to judge. Hilary Mantel writes dialogue with a breezy yet deep style. Her characters say a lot by saying so little. If I’m being too paradoxical, it’s because this is a book comfortable with paradox: the lowborn rising to high positions in Tudor England. It’s a stirring tale of politics and a cautionary one about the price of true reform. Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell is comfortable operating in […]

You pick your prince, and you know what he is

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CBR10Bingo: Award Winner Although the Man Booker Prize lists have long been a reliable source for new reading material, 2009 winner Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel never really appealed to me. I rarely read historical fiction, assuming it will either be stuffy and stilted and old-fashioned, or fluffy and cutesy and and old-fashioned. And while I may never become a huge fan of the genre, I can at least try to keep an open mind, particularly when it comes to reading more works by women. […]

Why are they all named Tom??

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I’ve had a copy of Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bringing Up the Bodies, on my bookshelves for…probably a couple of years. I’ve tried reading it a couple of times, but just could not get into it — despite the fact that I freaking love historical fiction about the Tudor court (seriously — I devoured all of the Philippa Gregory books about it in like two weeks) and it’s SO well-reviewed. But when your book begins with the main character as a young boy getting the shit beat […]

What goes up. . . .

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This book deserves a better-written review than it’s going to receive from me, since I read it at the beginning of the year, didn’t write a review, and now it’s December 30th. My own damn fault. This is the sequel to Wolf Hall, the story of the rise of Thomas Cromwell (and, at about the same time, Anne Boleyn). The king and Cromwell are staying with the Seymours at their home, Wolf Hall (which made me wonder why the first book was called that, since […]

Dearly Departed: If Thatcher had died in 1983.

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I’ve been reading a lot of short stories lately. Both Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel came out with collections this year, so I’ve found it interesting to compare their styles. Atwood’s stories are often complex in their setups, whereas Mantel is quite stripped down (the reverse of her Cromwell novels, which I found slow-moving and very dense) in tone and style. While Atwood’s collection is about love, betrayal, and revenge, Mantel focuses on a more vague state-of-nation sensibility and covers a variety of ideas in […]

Wolf Hall, or the redemption of Thomas Cromwell

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The tour de Mantel continues with Wolf Hall, about the rise of Thomas Cromwell (no spoilers here, but the fall of Thomas Cromwell comes in another book). We learn a bit about Cromwell through flashbacks – the abuse at the hands of his father, running off to France to become a mercenary, learning about culture and banking in Antwerp, and generally becoming a Renaissance man. He returns to England, becomes a merchant, and eventually ended up working for Cardinal Wolsey, advisor to Henry VIII. Cromwell […]



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