Book Review: Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Okay, so I appreciate the fantastic writing and tone in this book, as well as the great character-building (how much do you love "he, Cromwell", and even Thomas More by the end of this book?), and the philosophical and historical questions the book raises about religion. I can understand why it won awards.

That being said, I struggled with this book. Even being somewhat familiar with history during this time period, I often felt very confused, and had to re-read passages several times. Part of this is because you often don't know who exactly is doing the action or dialogue- "he" generally means Thomas Cromwell but not always. It's not a book that I couldn't put down- it felt in some ways like homework. I'm glad I read it, but I'm not sure I'm going to recommend it to anyone. Then again, if you really like historical fiction (which I do), particularly the Henry the VIII time period, you might enjoy this book. It certainly offers a lot of insight into the life of Thomas Cromwell (though it ends rather abruptly before the fall of Anne Boleyn, which I thought was unfortunate- sequel anyone? I'm not sure I have it in me to read another).

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