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    Wolf Hall
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    Wolf Hall
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    Wolf Hall
    Audiobook (abridged)7 hours

    Wolf Hall

    Written by Hilary Mantel

    Narrated by Dan Stevens

    4/5

    ()

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    About this audiobook

    Winner of the Man Booker Prize Shortlisted for the the Orange Prize Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award

    `Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good' Daily Mail

    ‘Our most brilliant English writer’ Guardian

    England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor.

    Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.

    From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateNov 6, 2009
    ISBN9780007237258
    Unavailable
    Wolf Hall
    Author

    Hilary Mantel

    Hilary Mantel is the author of seventeen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, the memoir Giving Up the Ghost and the short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Her latest novel, The Mirror & the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, while Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were both awarded the Booker Prize.

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    Reviews for Wolf Hall

    4/5

    3,988 ratings371 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Disjointed, yet lyrical, frustrating, yet I could not put it down. If you're looking for a quick and easy summer read, go pick up Plaidy or Gregory, this isn't for you. If you want history seen from the eyes of one of the major players in the story of Henry VIII's battle for a divorce and the catastrophic events that followed, read this book. The story is told from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell, the much maligned (rightfully I think, on some points) lawyer who became the most powerful man in England after Henry. This is the first in the trilogy and the title may put some off - Wolf Hall is the home of the Seymour family - for it really has nothing to do with the story (or does it?). It took me three starts to finally get into the book, but I didn't give up. Mantel's writing and style earn her the Booker, and deservedly.
    • 5/5
      Others have spoken of the breadth and scope of this novel, but no one has mentioned its intimacy. This novel whispers in my ear, acquainting me with human beings whose fears and joys and uncertainties are wholly contemporary. Figures of the Reformation take on breath and thought. They live emotionally.The value of this novel lies not so much in its historical accuracy (although it is obvious that Hilary Mantle did her homework) as in the immediacy of its voice. I was enthralled by a growing intimacy with the man who shaped, for good or ill, the "King's Great Matter" and England. By the last page I felt I knew this man as I would know a lover or a brother.I became interested in the book because of the title. A book about Cromwell titled after the Seymour family seat sounded fascinating. Throughout the novel Jane Seymour's presence inserts small, precise punctuations, foreshadowing future complications with the succession.Overall, this novel left me with a new appreciation of Cromwell and his contemporaries that has changed forever the way I view the Reformation. Make no mistake. This novel is about Cromwell and his life. The events of his life happened to include historical events that shaped a world, but the events of his life shaped him. The interplay of the man and his time was marvelously depicted by Hilary Mantle.
    • 4/5
      I'm always amazed at historical fiction writers' abilities to weave details into an already-established narrative. It's an art, and Hillary Mantel is a brilliant artist.
    • 5/5
      Dan Stevens’ reading is fabulous, really bringing the characters to life. I was completely embroiled in 16th century intrigue in every spare moment I could find to listen to it.
    • 2/5
      A note before I start because I feel bad about giving a book 2/5 stars: In the Goodreads rating system, two stars is "It was OK." And that's how I feel about this book. I didn't dislike it, but there weren't enough things I liked to bump it up to "liked it" (three stars).

      I'll start with what I liked about the book. I liked the way Mantel gets into Cromwell's head and constructs motivations for him and the other historical characters in the novel. Mantel fills in the missing details in Cromwell's life and gives him a nuanced character that I liked quite a bit.

      I also appreciated the way she traces the shifting alliances of those in power. There is no straight, honest path to success in Tudor England, it seems, and Mantel shows how each person molds himself (or herself) into what he thinks will garner favor with those in power. But there are no guarantees. Property, wealth, and position are bestowed on a whim and confiscated as easily. The 16th century seems like a really sucky time to be alive in England. (When was a good time to be alive in England? Reading David Hume's history of the 17th century, that doesn't seem much better, and I know the times before were as bad or worse. But I'll stop that train of thought here or I'll find myself in an existential morass, and I don't have enough chocolate to dig myself out before bedtime.)

      Which leads me to my dislikes.

      I think the biggest thing I disliked was just how bleak the story is. I thought for a while that it seemed bleak because I know how the story ends and so there was no hope for a better outcome. The mistakes were made hundreds of years ago, and there's no changing them without changing history. It's all too real to be particularly pleasurable to read. I'm not sure that's the only cause for the feeling of bleakness in the story, though. Maybe I just feel uncomfortable with people exercising their power with so little regard for the people around them. What's a life lost here or there? And public torture is a necessary evil, a tool to deter people from holding opinions unpopular with the king's current state of mind. It's possible I just don't like reading about monarchy.

      Apart from the bleakness, I found the style of the book distracting and even a little tedious. There were a lot of male pronouns kind of hanging out there without a clear reference to one of the many men in a scene. I often found myself reading over a section multiple times trying to figure out just who said what and who did what. An example: "The evening before Fisher is to die, he visits More." The "he" in that sentence does not refer to Fisher, but that wasn't apparent until seven lines down when More addresses his visitor by name. Needing to stop so often to decipher the pronouns kind of puts the brakes on the momentum of the story. I did fairly well when I just assumed that Cromwell was the "he," but that wasn't always true, either.

      And then there's the present tense. I admit, I have a bias against the present tense, especially in a long piece of writing. Aside from being useful to express action in a script or screenplay, the present tense can lend immediacy to an anecdote and help to express the sense that something isn't just a one-off but that it happens all the time. It's used frequently in blog posts. But this book isn't a blog post and it isn't about something that happens all the time. And it takes more than the present tense to lend immediacy to events that took place darned near 500 years ago. To me it felt like an attempt to make it feel like the reader was watching a movie, and I guess that's not something I like in my literature (or at least not 532 pages of it).

      I'm not sure why I made myself finish this book except that I didn't decide for sure that I didn't care if I finished it until I was about halfway through. I'd put in so much time by then, I wasn't willing to let it get the better of me. I will say this for the book: Although I wasn't totally keen on Wolf Hall, I liked it better than I did The Tudors (and it didn't take me as long to read the former as it took me to watch the latter).
    • 4/5
      Wolf Hall is no romanticized historical novel, and thank goodness for that. This is no tale of Henry VIII falling madly in love with Anne Boleyn and thoughtlessly breaking off ties with the Roman Catholic Church for the sake of true love. Instead, Mantel focuses on Thomas Cromwell, son of humble begininnings (we are frequently reminded he has no coat of arms to bear along with his name), and his rise to political power. Cromwell is calculating, shrewd, with an eye for where true power lies (in the treasury), and he is not one to be deceived by all the trappings of court-- and the reader will not be deceived by all the trappings of court, either, as they are revealed to be a mere layer of frivolity atop a much harder existence. There is no glamorization of the House of Tudor here.Cromwell is shrewd, to be sure, but we also see a human side of him in his dealings with his household: in his lingering depression over his wife's and children's deaths, in his attachments to his various wards, and in his conflicted attachment to his son. Yet we also see the hard-driven side of Cromwell in his dealings with Thomas More-- who is not in his most noble character of A Man for All Seasons. We see his deep attachment to Wolsey, an attachment that transcends political and religious transformations. Cromwell is in no way a man motivated by one single ambition or one single view of the human character.And the peripheral characters are no less intriguing. We see Henry's conflicted relationship with the Church at Rome, his desire for male issue, his complex (but never truly romantic) relationship with Anne Boleyn; Anne Boleyn as a shrewd (not to overuse the word) character in her own right; her sister, Mary, as a woman caught up in and overused by the court; and Jane Seymour, always fluttering at the edge of the narrative, waiting to step in and take center stage. Wolsey is a magnificant portrait. More, flawed and intractable, is presented in a new light, and his character is fresher for being presented in such a way. Minor characters, such as the boy Christophe, provide comic relief and allow us to see Cromwell's human side.The novel is deeply researched, yet a decent, Wikipedia-level familiarity with persons and events will suffice to get you through the book without getting you bogged down in detail; everything is contextualized well enough that you can follow along. That's saying a lot, considering the complexity of the material Mantel is dealing with and the level of socio-political-religious upheaval that was occuring in Europe at the time. I was impressed at the wealth of detail, and yet there were only a few points at which I felt a bit adrift.The naming sometimes does get confusing; it reminded me a bit of a Russian novel in this way: everyone has their familiar name, their family name, their courtly name, and their nickname. There is a reference at the beginning of the novel that provides an overview of the cast of characters, but interrupting the flow of the novel to go back and reference who's who can be tedious. And there's the simple fact-- unavoidable-- that there were not that many different names in circulation at this time.Wolf Hall is powerful, moving, and immerses you deeply in its time period. You will feel caught up immediately in the sweeping changes of the time period, feel immediately caught up in the tide of change, and identify immediately with a man-from-nowhere who is at the center of these changes. It is very powerful to see how one man can define himself in an era where a king's word controlled the very life or death of a human being, where human life itself was so tenuous that it hung by the will of a sleeping sickness or a sword. Cromwell stands like a stone, yet he is human; he is a paradoxical character, difficult to grasp hold of-- as his contemporaries saw, and as Mantel makes us see. History and the novel resist attempts to define him, and the result is quite an accomplishment.
    • 5/5
      Set in the time of Henry VIII of England, the book’s title ‘Wolf Hall’ is a little misleading. That was the name of the Seymour family’s home, and they play only peripheral roles in this book, although ultimately the events will lead Henry there. This book is about Thomas Cromwell, set mainly during the time of Henry’s fight to divorce his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, marry Anne Boleyn and get a male heir to the throne. Drunken, violent blacksmith’s son made good, Cromwell ran away from his abuser at an early age and made his way to success via stints as a hired fighter in foreign armies, then learning the arts of being a merchant. He returned to England to work for Cardinal Wolsey, long King Henry’s right hand man. Cromwell survives Wolsey’s fall from grace and rises dizzyingly to the top, becoming Henry’s top servant in short time. Normally painted one sided as a greedy, amoral man with no redeeming graces, Cromwell emerges in this book as a man who suffers, worries and celebrates the things all humans do. He loves his wife and children, cares deeply for the fates of the people who come to depend on him, likes cats, and can hold a grudge for his whole life. He is a protagonist that the reader can care about and relate to, something I did not expect given the image I had of him from history books. Mantel brings Tudor England to life vividly, not just the splendors of the court- which isn’t really very splendid at all- but the dirt and poverty of the lower class and the day to day life of the middle class. This creates a balanced picture of the age that most historical novelists do not bother with. She also provides an alternate, and surprising, motive for many of Cromwell’s actions beyond mere greed. Despite the great detail and depth of the book, it’s not perfect. The author does not always make it clear who is speaking. Dialogue does not always have quotes bracketing it, and she frequently changes subject within a paragraph, starting the paragraph with one person speaking, then referring to ‘him’ or ‘he’ in the next line, but not referencing the speaker but Cromwell. Cromwell is simply ‘he’ a lot of the time, and it’s very confusing. Almost equally confusing is Mantel’s alternate use of a characters name or his title, but there is a cast of characters in the front of the book to deal with that. Still, this is a marvelous, engaging book that lovers of the Tudor age should read.
    • 5/5
      I started reading about the Plantagenet/Tudor era many years ago, and found it fascinating, completing many nonfiction books and watching the superb BBC series, "The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth", followed by the equally masterful "Elizabeth R". I figured I was pretty well-versed on the subject and didn't have a lot to learn.Wrong yet again.The amazing and absorbing "Wolf Hall" presents the rise of Thomas Cromwell from that worthy's point of view. While it would be impossible to make this complicated, almost Byzantine, time easy to comprehend, author Mantel does a magnificent job, guiding the reader through the maze of Thomases, Henrys, Katherines and Annes that so easily can become confusing. Long-dead men and women vividly come to life as very real people with multiple needs and desires. It's intriguing to see how little human motivations change over time, and how a hurt given can come back to bite the giver.This is not an easy read, but amply repays the moderate effort required. Five out of five stars, and one of my top ten reads of 2011.Several notes:The revered Thomas More doesn't show up well here. Mantel exposes More's delight in self-flagellation, his casual and constant verbal cruelty to his wife, and his obsessive torture of those with a different point of view--surely not saintly behavior as we think of it.There's a lot of off-handed humor in this book; much of it is very witty, some of it coarse, soem of it both. Why is this scarcely mentioned in other reviews?The title: for quite a while I puzzled over the title. Wolf Hall is the family seat of the Seymours, and plays little part in this story. Eventually it dawned on me that if ever there were a true Wolf Hall, or perhaps "Wolves' Hall", it was the court of Henry VIII.The only complaint, a minor one, is the occasional use of modern phrasing, particularly "for sure".
    • 4/5
      I wouldn't have bothered with it without the recommendation from friends. It helped knowing the voice .. him/he was Cromwell before I started although it would have been made sense quickly.I wasn't ever sure I really liked it but I felt compelled to finish it which says a lot for the author.
    • 3/5
      I did find this quite difficult to get into in the beginning and there was another bit around two thirds of the way through where I began to flag. However, it was certainly an interesting read and a new twist on the Tudor story, making Thomas Cromwell the central figure. The history seemed consistent with my (albeit limited!) knowledge and the book was well written.
    • 5/5
      If there was a higher rating, I'd give it to this book. The writing is simply sublime, and the portrait that Mantel creates is astonishing. I'm rarely drawn to historical fiction, but this is an exception.
    • 5/5
      Never enjoyed a historical novel more. Looking forward to the second and third volumes.
    • 4/5
      Publication Date: October 13, 2009
      In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII’s court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king’s favor and ascend to the heights of political power

      England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum.

      Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

      In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.

      My Review:
      Hilary Mantel did an excellent job in researching this novel. The problem with the novel is the ambiguity of who was speaking to whom and the constant scene change without notice. I will continue with the series as I am enjoying reading of this period of history which is very intriguing and hopefully Bringing Up The Bodies will prove to be a better novel. I would give this book 3.5 stars rounded up to 4stars for my Shelfari rating.
    • 4/5
      Wolf Hall by Hilary MantelWhile I enjoyed this read I cannot say that I loved it or even found it to be anything extraordinary. I kept telling myself that it was just because I have read so much over the past 50 years on this subject matter and it wasn't until the last fourth of the book that I came upon anything intriguing to me. But I don't think that is it at all. I think that we tend to feel that a book of this size & heft must be of amazing redemptive value. IDK. But I didn't find it so. I have read much slimmer volumes on this subject that I would have to rate higher than I did this one.The subject matter I do and always have found to be of great interest. I was just expecting this one to bring more to the table, especially with all of the hype it received.All of that being said this is the story of Henry the VIII, Cromwell & all of the secondary players that go along with this bit of history. I did enjoy the book enough to rate it 3 1/2* and enough to want to read the sequel.
    • 5/5
      He, Thomas Cromwell, Hilary Mantel’s creation, lives and breathes between this book’s pages, building influence, power plays and a household as he survives the fall of Wolsey and thrives alongside the rise of the Boleyns. It really doesn’t matter how much or little resemblance Cromwell or any of the other characters bear to their historical counterparts. In this novel, it’s Hilary Mantel’s intensely detailed personal and political world building that counts. Plus, on a second reading, an exploration of the many mythologies, not merely of the Reformation, that unite and divide the kingdoms we, ourselves, now inhabit. This is a dense, chewy, delicious, satisfying novel.
    • 3/5
      As a novel this is book is deeply unsatisifying, because you are left wondering what motivated Thomas Cromwell -- power, money, satisfaction in a job well done, revenge for the treatment of Woolsey, disgust with the Catholic church, patriotism, narcissism? Even a non-fiction biographer usually has an opinion on such matters, but Mantel leaves it wide open. As a work of history, this book is unsatisfying, because not enough context is provided to understand the religious conflict -- the motivations of the so-called heretics are given only glancing attention. As an audiobook, however, I can recommend this; it is beautifully read, and if you miss some detail because you're concentrating on a difficiult merge into traffic, don't worry, it will be repeated.
    • 3/5
      I have a question. How did this win the Booker Prize? It is a good idea. Tell the story of the Tudors from the viewpoint of Cromwell. Make him the hero and More the bad guy. But when there are so many characters you cannot just throw out the pronoun "he" and expect the reader to know who is talking. Also, why make the reader work so hard to follow the story. If not for the cast of characters listed at the beginning I would have been totally lost. I did like the history but the story was too muddled to be able to follow. She needed an editor big time.
    • 2/5
      I really am into historical novels, but this wasn't for me. I tried until page 100, but I really couldn't care about the characters. Such a shame, cause I think this could have been a great book.I had to look back all the time who the 'he' was Mantel was referring to. That takes the speed out of reading. English is not my mother tongue, but I like to read books in their original language. For a while I thought my english wasn't good enough for this book, but now I think (how arrogant of me...) that this book is not well written at all...For the historical novel lovers out there, I can recommend Ken Follett's 'Pillars of the Earth'. That's a great read!
    • 1/5
      I tried three times to read this and gave up each time. It's too difficult to keep all the protaganists separate when they are all called the same few names. Every sencond person is a Thomas, and the rest are Williams and Henrys. Not a thrilling writing style either. This is a shame as it had been recommended to me and I wanted to like it.
    • 4/5
      Political machinations. Sexual intrigue. Fiery martyrdoms. Bloody executions. Bawdy, bold, and merciless, this is the age of the Tudors, the early days of the Reformation, when England was being remade from the inside out. In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell from his humble origins as a blacksmith's son to one of Henry V's most powerful courtiers. Along the way we get fascinating portraits of the key figures at court: Henry himself, Anne Boleyn, Katherine, Mary Tudor, Mary Boleyn, Thomas Boleyn, Norfolk, More, Audley, Wolsey, Cranmer, and others. I never knew so much about this period of history before.Cromwell is an enigma, brought to life so deftly in this novel. There's no doubt about his abilities or ambition, and it's astonishing how far he rose in a time when upward social mobility was almost impossible. Certainly he was a politically astute opportunist and somewhat of a bully, but he is also oddly attractive in this telling, with a wry humor and self-deprecating inner voice. No one knew much about his past life besides his lowly birth. He was the man of business for Charles Wolsey, cardinal of the church and Lord Chancellor, until Wolsey fell from favor. Despite his well-known loyalty to Wolsey, Cromwell seems to have slowly stepped into his old master's shoes at court. Religiously, it seems he was sympathetic toward the Reformers and read their works, even while enforcing the will of the Catholic king known as the Defender of the Faith. A man of many contradictions.Mantel's style is hard to describe. Regular conversations suddenly break off and are continued as narrative descriptions, random musings and memories interject with the story but somehow complement it — like a person's wandering thoughts in the midst of everyday business. Some of the descriptions of torture and martyrdom, while never gratuitous, will bother me for awhile. Mantel is certainly a master of her craft and her cast of characters live and breathe. Wolf Hall has been touted as one of the best novels of recent years, and despite my dislike of its coarse language and content, I'd have to agree. Well written and steeped in the ideas, habits, and culture of the times, it is one of the more memorable historical novels I've ever read.
    • 4/5
      It is interesting to read familiar history in such detail. Mantel characterizes the humanity and complexity of Thomas Cromwell, whom I remember as but a shadow to Henry VIII in history books. He was a man who overcame his low-born beginnings to become a trusted advisor to a king. Surrounded by gentry of royal birth, he climbed the ranks by using his fine mind and sheer determination. Seeing Henry VIII and his place in history through Cromwell's eyes gave me a different perspective on this fascinating time.This book of courtly chicanery, bed hopping, and back stabbing won the most recent Booker Prize. Mantel writes in great depth about the power struggle between the King and the Pope including all the bit players behind the scenes. It is easy to get lost in the confusion of myriad characters. It requires several hundred pages to get into Mantel's atypical style of writing that leans heavily on pronouns without antecedents. I started out by doing some rereading of passages trying to absorb every detail, but it was when I abandoned myself to the rhythm of reading that I became immersed in the many layers of this story. In the words of the author, "Beneath every history, another history."
    • 4/5
      This book follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell from his days of being a blacksmiths son through to being the Cardinals right hand man to creating the laws for Henry VIII. A fair man who was seen by many in the book as a bully and a man of low principals he was throughout the book the fairest man within the Kings inner circle. But you also follow how as a man who's business covered many areas he could see where the next big thing was coming from. As he jumps from benefactor to benfactor to help his future self.A book of intrigue as you see how Anne won her King and changed the rules of the land to get it. How the King saw himself above God and aboce reproach as he won the right to marry his "love". Also you can see how people worked behind the scenes to keep the status quo and to try and stop the Kings wondering eye moving onto the next Queen of England.
    • 1/5
      I have had a spate of bad luck with books lately. This seems to be a beautifully written book about a terrible and painful subject. The opening chapter was too much for me.

      I'm getting too old to spend time on books that make me cringe. The sheer level of violence depicted in the first chapter was way too much for me. I felt battered even by the reading of it.

      I am quite sure there are lots of readers who would really enjoy this. However, this was not for me.
    • 4/5
      El estira y afloja de Enrique VIII por anular su matrimonio hasta que consigue que el parlamento lo reconozca como cabeza de la iglesia inglesa es narrado de manera envolvente y con un gran ritmo por Mantel; centrándose en la figura del hijo de un herrero y que en su juventud había sido mercader de telas, Thomas Cromwell. En la narración Mantel muestra cómo fue su labor, sus negociaciones las que consiguieron que Enrique VIII pudiera anular su primer matrimonio, casarse con Ana Bolena y separarse de la iglesia católica, para lo cual hubo de dar la espalda a algunos de los hombres que lo ayudaron a llegar hasta el rey como el cardenal Wosley o Thomas Moro.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book, once I had got my head around Hilary Mantel's style of writing (and the size of the book!), I grew to really like Thomas Cromwell as a person. Weird, I have read a lot of historical novels but this one has definately left it's mark.
    • 4/5
      A good book, but I felt it ended entirely too abruptly. I eventually got over the writer's quirk of referring to Cromwell constantly as only "he," and while the plot seemed to build, it cut off abruptly and not with the resolution or payoff I had expected. None the less, very good book about a fascinating character and fascinating time in English history.
    • 4/5
      Started reading in April, but loan expired and couldn’t get it again until a couple weeks ago. Wonderful book. A lot I didn’t understand and certainly too many details to follow them all, but a great story told with an almost poetic rhythm. Would’ve been great to hear spoken aloud I think. Not sure I’m up for two more books of this but who knows?

      PS If you’re concerned that it would be unsatisfying to read only the first book of a trilogy don’t worry in this case - this is absolutely a complete story in this book. It ends very elegantly and doesn’t tease with a cliffhanger.
    • 5/5
      Wolf Hall provides an immersive experience into the 16th century court of Henry VIII. The plot involves the rise of Thomas Cromwell from humble beginnings to one of the most influential people in the realm. His character is articulated extremely vividly – ambitious, intelligent, flawed, at times ruthless. Other deeply drawn characters include Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More.

      Mantel imagines and interprets her characters but remains true to historic events. No wild inventions are needed to provide the intrigue, romance, power plays, and betrayals characteristic of the period. The people are portrayed in a manner that feels authentic. I could easily picture the violence, liaisons, machinations, and politics of the court.

      I highly recommend the audiobook, read expertly by Simon Slater. He gives distinct voices to each character – and there are many characters. It was easy to follow, like listening to a stage play. The only disadvantage was not being able to re-read certain sections, especially the flashbacks to an earlier time. I suspect I enjoyed it more due to listening to it rather than reading it.

      To fully enjoy this book, the reader must desire to delve deeply into the details of the Tudor dynasty. It is a lengthy book – my physical copy is 650 pages. A background in the history of this age is helpful. I supplemented the content by looking up information on various people and events, which I found beneficial.

      The ending could have been stronger, but this is a minor quibble, as this is the first book in a trilogy. I enjoyed it so much that I have already started listening to the second, Bring Up the Bodies. I hope to read the third, The Mirror and the Light, later this year.
    • 3/5
      An historical novel reconstructs the past such that a personage or series of events is recreated in fictional form. The spirit of the age should both be respected and presented in a way that instructs and entertains the reader. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel focuses on the personage of Thomas Cromwell while attempting to both present the details of his personal life and present the historical controversies of the age of Henry VIII. I was unconvinced by the attempt. While the historical narrative flowed and provided a balance of detail and overview, the family sagas of Thomas and his friends and enemies (notably Sir Thomas More) were byzantine and the details overwhelmed this reader. The age presented was one of tumultuous events with the devious plans of Cardinal Wolsey as representative of the Crown to abet Henry's search for a suitable successor atop epiphenomena whose undercurrent threatened to pull down any of the main players at almost any time. The addition of references to the impact of the plague and the difficulties of life in general for the families included in this saga began to go beyond the bounds of Rabelaisian amusement and wonder. I found myself questioning how it all came together. Lest I forget the best of the novel, for Mantel kept me reading with her sure clear prose style and there were moments, even when the personal family relations were being narrated were fine stuff -- the historical interludes made it bearable. I am a reader who likes to develop a sense of the whole project of a novel and this one defied my attempt. The best parts suggest to me that at least part of my difficulty with the book must my own responsibility. I would recommend The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa to anyone as an example of the finest in historical novels.
    • 4/5
      Wolf Hall. Hilary Mantel. (Book one of the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy) 2009. Even though, I have always enjoyed books on Tudor history, this one got a little tedious. At 600 plus pages, it takes a commitment. It is extremely well-written as it should be since it won the Man Booker Prize. It is the story of Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power as he helps Henry VIII break with the Catholic Church so he can marry Anne Boleyn. All the characters are here including Wolsey, More, and Katherine of Aragon. This is a vivid, sensual depiction of Tudor England.