You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
The best thing about this book is its reputation, the worst thing is that in reality the novel hardly lives up to it. It's still a nice take on historic fiction yet there are just too many questions regarding Mantel's storytelling skills that are almost impossible to ignore.
It's obvious the idea was to use Cromwell's biography as means to show that even back then the world was not run in throne rooms but in merchant cities (almost the exact quote from the book), it wasn't run by kings but by bankers and people of money. The thing with people of money is that they make the world move by talking and writing letters/messages, which is not as exciting as it might seem. Wolf Hall is an endless parade of dialogues of various levels of significance; they are so plentiful that the actual result of all this talking are buried under yet another conversation, and another, and another. Having focused mostly on how things were done, Mantel has almost lost the sight of what was done, and it's the latter that keeps the story going, not the former. Thus, the pacing of Wolf Hall is appalingly uneven: you can find yourself drowing in an insignificant conversation in Cromwell's household and then almost miss a passing by comment 'Oh, yeah, the queen is now in exile'.
And those dialogues! They are the definition of meandering: countless courtiers and associates with motives that only seem different yet in reality they all discuss one and the same thing. Again, it's clear that the sole point of introducing all of them into the story was to show that Henry VIII's court in general and Cromwell's network in particular were akin to a bright elaborate tapestry. However, you don't really need to document every single conversation to make your point, it's the precision of a narrative that does the job, not its volume. Unfortunately, Mantel lacks in this department, which is why looking for a truly meaningful dialogue feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.
If only Cromwell's story had been told told in one book instead of three; if only Mantel had curbed her excessiveness and tried to be more concise and straight to the point, it would've been a great take on a well-known story throught the eyes of one the most important people of that era. Mantel's writing is at times really witty but unfortunately these episodes are set too apart from each other (thanks to all the redundant scenes) so that you can't really enjoy their continuity.
All in all, Wolf Hall is a nice read... for the first 300 pages until you get utterly bored with its meaningless repetitiveness.
It's obvious the idea was to use Cromwell's biography as means to show that even back then the world was not run in throne rooms but in merchant cities (almost the exact quote from the book), it wasn't run by kings but by bankers and people of money. The thing with people of money is that they make the world move by talking and writing letters/messages, which is not as exciting as it might seem. Wolf Hall is an endless parade of dialogues of various levels of significance; they are so plentiful that the actual result of all this talking are buried under yet another conversation, and another, and another. Having focused mostly on how things were done, Mantel has almost lost the sight of what was done, and it's the latter that keeps the story going, not the former. Thus, the pacing of Wolf Hall is appalingly uneven: you can find yourself drowing in an insignificant conversation in Cromwell's household and then almost miss a passing by comment 'Oh, yeah, the queen is now in exile'.
And those dialogues! They are the definition of meandering: countless courtiers and associates with motives that only seem different yet in reality they all discuss one and the same thing. Again, it's clear that the sole point of introducing all of them into the story was to show that Henry VIII's court in general and Cromwell's network in particular were akin to a bright elaborate tapestry. However, you don't really need to document every single conversation to make your point, it's the precision of a narrative that does the job, not its volume. Unfortunately, Mantel lacks in this department, which is why looking for a truly meaningful dialogue feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.
If only Cromwell's story had been told told in one book instead of three; if only Mantel had curbed her excessiveness and tried to be more concise and straight to the point, it would've been a great take on a well-known story throught the eyes of one the most important people of that era. Mantel's writing is at times really witty but unfortunately these episodes are set too apart from each other (thanks to all the redundant scenes) so that you can't really enjoy their continuity.
All in all, Wolf Hall is a nice read... for the first 300 pages until you get utterly bored with its meaningless repetitiveness.