Why this book: Selected by my literature Reading Group based on excellent reviews and having won the Man Booker Prize. 

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Historical novel set in the early 1500s in England, built around King Henry VIII’s desire to divorce his wife of 20 years,  in order to pursue his infatuation with Anne Boleyn who he hoped would give him a male heir.   The central figure in the novel is Thomas Cromwell a man of working class background,  but who has become a trusted attorney and facilitator within the English court and who is somehow involved in all aspects of the King’s efforts to divorce his wife, and ultimately divorce England from Catholic church.  The author did an immense amount of research to ensure her novel is consistent with what is known from the history of that era, and she makes Thomas Cromwell a fascinating figure, deftly maneuvering in a world of political and sexual intrigue and the rise and fall of large egos, during a period of major transition of England from Catholic to Anglican Christianity.

My impressions: Wolf Hall is beautifully written, but not easy to read.  The story is complex, with a large caste of characters – so large in fact that I regularly referred to the list of characters at the beginning of the book to help me recall who many of them were.  In my reading group, some chose not to finish it – having struggled to follow the rather intricate plot, taking place among the multiple factions with vested interest in the outcome of King Henry’s desire to annul his marriage in order to make Ann Boleyn his queen.

The story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is well known to many; HOW Hilary Mantel tells it is what makes this version stand out.  The true majesty of the book, and clearly why it has received its awards and so much positive recognition is in the quality of the writing, the author’s deep understanding of how people think and interact, and how she imagines the conversations between the articulate, intelligent, well educated, but often self-centered ambitious characters in the book.  I was continuously amazed at her insights and nuance that emerge from the conversations she describes.

I was not terribly familiar with the story of King Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Sir Thomas More, though in Britain it is very well known.  Indeed I found  getting inside the story fascinating on multiple levels:

• The political intrigue and maneuvering for power and influence is a familiar theme and resonates to this day;
• the relationship between secular and religious authority was a key issue then – not so much now;
• the role and power of the Catholic Church in Renaissance Europe,  and how its corruption cost it in credibility, and led to the power of the Reformation; 
• the disruption caused by Martin Luther to European civilization, and how and why it was so controversial to translate the Bible from Latin into languages which the common people could understand; 
• how different life was before electricity, and the many modern conveniences which we take for granted, but at the same time, the human issues remain very familiar;
• the indicators of the transition of rule by fiat of a king, to rule by parliament and law are evident here. The King was frustrated that he couldn’t just do what he wanted; 
• the helplessness of so many – the rich and the poor – in the face of the ravaging effects of disease and plague.  Cromwell lost much of his family, and getting sick was often a death sentence;  
• and though we don’t read in Wolf Hall much of how the poorest people lived, even the wealthy and the aristocracy lived lives that we today would not envy. 

This is not a quick or light read.  To read Wolf Hall one must be patient and prepared for a deliberate and more subtle pleasure.  It is not “fast food” literature.   It must be read patiently and savored. I found I enjoyed it most when I read it in the morning when I was fresh; reading it tired and distracted late in the evening just didn’t work well for me.  In the end it was very much worth it for me. 

A number of themes rang out in the book.  Thomas Cromwell is the centerpiece and “hero” of the book, and is a model, and a modern character in many ways.  He was a commoner who rose to be one of the most powerful men in England, but was still looked down upon and resented by the well-born from the ancient and aristocratic families of England.  Mantel makes him into a reasonable, and practical man, compassionate and generous, but also very clever and politically astute in subtly accruing and retaining power and influence.  He was always very controlled and deliberate.  We get to know him well, his inner life, his doubts and conflicts.

But for him, personal survival and attaining the resources and influence to take care of his family and those closest to him was his primary objective.  Though loyal honest and often selfless, he still knew how to win the trust of those he needed, in order to protect his interests, and seemed always to land on his feet. Thomas More said of him:  “Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning, and when you come back that night, he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion, eating larks’ tongues, and all the jailers will owe him money.” (p561)

In contrast to Cromwell we have the greedy but charming sensualist Henry VIII, the ambitious, cold and calculating Anne Boleyn, the many clumsy older Dukes and nobles of the English aristocracy, Cromwells first boss and sponsor, Bishop Wolsey, as well as numerous friends and enemies in the shark tank of the King’s court.  But most importantly Wolf Hall portrays Cromwell’s relationship with the cruelly principled Thomas More, the deposed Archbishop of Canterbury, who was zealously committed to the rightness of his principles and exercised his authority and conviction in a merciless “grand inquisitor” style.  The final part of the book pits Cromwell’s pragmatism against More’s very stoic principled view of life, and we the readers are left admiring both, but clearly the author’s favorite is Cromwell. 

In reading this book, it is useful to review the excellent summaries on Litcharts.com, as well as the background and character analysis they offer. Also, the PBS series based on the novel is very well done and complements the reading of this intricate novel quite well.  

I highly recommend Wolf Hall for the discriminating reader. 

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Some examples of the excellent writing which so impressed me: (page numbers refer to the paper back edition pictured.)

At court and in the offices of Westminster, he dresses not a whit above his gentleman’s station, in loose jackets of Lemster wool so fine they flow like water, in purples and indigos so near black that it looks as if the night has bled into them…p317

A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face.  It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.  p331

When he is admitted, she is pacing, her hands clasped, and she looks small and tense, as if someone has knitted her and drawn the stitches too tight.  p344

The world is not run from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun, but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.  p349

“…it’s just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it’s quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on.”  p406

..It is a lie so staggering that he has to admire it.  p420

She is a mouse under the cat’s paw.  p446

There’s a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an ax when you take it into your hand.  You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.  p479

(Thomas More to Cromwell:) “This relentless bonhomie of yours. I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now the small silver is worn out, and we see the base metal.” p526

“Bishop Gardiner will be burning up inside.  His giblets will be sizzling in his own grease.” p530

“See these quails? You get more meat on a wasp.”  p530

Rafe says.. “I am violently in love with her”  “How does that feel? Is it like being violently angry?”  “I suppose. Maybe. In that you feel more alive.”  p531

…there is another landscape; there is a buried empire…all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones. For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.  p534

The duke rants… You should have sent young Fitzroy to Dublin, he tells the council. An apprentice king – make a show, stage a spectacle, throw some money about.  p543

If Anne were my wife, he thinks, I’d go out for the afternoon. She looks haggard, and she cannot stay still; you wouldn’t trust her near a sharp knife. p552

The women laugh, but their laughter is cold.  p 559

“Mary wants money. She says, she knows she should not have been so hasty.  She says, love overcame reason.”  “Love, was it?” p560

(Thomas More’s wife about her husband:) “…he wore a shirt of hair beneath his linen. He did so when we were married and I begged him to leave it off and I thought he had. But how would I know? He slept alone and drew the bolt on his door. If he had an itch I never knew it, he was perforce to scratch it himself.” p 562

He is tired out from the effort of deciphering the wold.  Tired from the effort of smiling at the foe.  p569