Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall: a novel by Hilary Mantel (Find this book in our catalog)

I blogged about this book when it won the Man Booker Prize this year (Read more...). Now I have read the book and I think it is even better than the reviews!

With Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel (read more about the author) engages the reader with this familiar story of Henry VIII's divorce in a completely new and fresh way. To me the voice of Thomas Cromwell with which this story is told this is the most appealing aspect of an absorbing and fascinating and intellectually challenging book.

Thomas Cromwell is the narrator, and yet the story is not told in the first person but in the third, by a "he." "He" is in all the conversations and speaks Cromwells' words. It is as though the reader and Cromwell too are there as spectators receiving blow-by-blow commentary, and also both there looking out through Cromwell's eyes.

The story is about the Court of Henry VIII in the 1530's at the time of his courtship of Anne Boleyn and his seeking a divorce from Katherine of Aragon. The book is a powerful, fascinating, and detailed retelling of the court intrigue and politics of those times, the fall of Wolsey, and the rise of the Boleyns. It is also about the early attempts at religious reform, the controversy over the vernacular Bible, and the persecution, imprisonment, torture and death that was meted out to people of all persuasions from all sides.

Nothing is as it seems. Men and women rise and fall on the apparent whim of the monarch and yet everything is ruled by the urgent need to produce a male heir to the throne and ensure the stability of the realm. Hilary mantel's depiction of the universal panic at the thought of an invasion of England, which was thought to be inevitable if Henry died without a male heir, brings a fresh view to this well-known story.

Cromwell is there at every council, taking advantage of the instability to acquire more offices and more power. Mantel's portrait of Cromwell is a very nuanced one and a much more sympathic one than we are used to. "He" is a caring man and loves small dogs, he is a loving husband and father, a generous benefactor, neighbor, and employer. He is loyal and yet vengeful. He is principled and yet single-mindedly ambitious and ruthless. He is a polymath and a student of the scriptures. He is a great deal more intelligent than his opponents, and understands human nature only too well. And yet he does not seem to understand himself. He is "he" who speaks his lines and yet he stands away from himself. He is action and yet does not seem to allow himself feelings.

I am sure you will have a great deal of pleasure in trying to work out what drives Cromwell, and also in seeing the other familiar actors in this drama through Hilary Mantel's fresh eyes: Anne Boleyn, Thomas More, the Duke of Norfolk.

Throughout the book we hear of Wolf Hall where the Seymours, whose downtrodden daughter Jane is at court, are living in digrace. At the close of the book Cromwell is about to travel to Wolf Hall. Does he even understand his own motives? Have the political winds begun to shift again?

Man Booker Prize - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel won the 2009 Man Booker Prize with Wolf Hall, set in the 1520s in the court of Henry VIII. (Find this book in our catalog)
The judges described Wolf Hall as "a thoroughly modern novel set in the 16th century" with "a vast narrative sweep that gleams on every page with luminous and mesmerising detail." They also said the novel, "probes the mysteries of power by examining and describing the meticulous dealings in Henry VIII's court, revealing in thrilling prose how politics and history is made by men and women. In the words of Mantel's Thomas Cromwell, whose story this is, 'the fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes'."