‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantel
‘Wolf Hall’ is a slice of life, or I should say a full loaf of Tudor life, seen entirely through the eyes of advisor to King Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell. It’s all there in the novel, the food, the frocks, the Papal dispensations, the plumbing, the trivial and the even more trivial. Also there are many, many characters in the novel, perhaps as many as actually lived in Tudor times, all roles to be filled for the movie which should start filming any day now. The Tudor people are religious, superstitious, and all too prone to gossip. King Henry is rampant, most of the men are rampant, and most of the women are accommodating. In other words, Tudor life is just like modern times.
- “Nothing is running, except the cooks’ noses.”
I’m not sure what type of research Hilary Mantel did to determine that the cooks’ noses were running during this particular dinner, but I’m sure it was extensive. I’ve read another novel by Hilary Mantel, ‘Beyond Black’ which was very good. It’s too bad that now Mantel will be 
consigned to writing historical works about fools, royal and otherwise. But at least it should be lucrative. In ‘Wolf Hall’, nearly everyone comes off as a fool except, surprise, Thomas Cromwell and his family. Thomas Cromwell comes off as an enterprising, thoughtful, and above all steady Englishman. The audiodisk narrator uses the cute English expression ‘Whot?’ instead of ‘What?’ nauseatingly often, but that may be the fault of the audiodisk rather than the novel. The audiodisk guy also has the worst French accent ever.
The eighteen ‘Wolf Hall’ audiodisks have that one characteristic which is the bane of audiodisks, no clear indication when each disk ends. Thus by the time I reached the end of a disk, I would have forgotten whatever tidbit of gossip about Anne Boleyn or her sister Mary Boleyn or whatever fine point of papal doctrine by Cardinal Wolsey or Thomas More that began the disk, and I would listen to the whole disk all over again. One time, I listened to a disk three times before I realized I had heard it all before.
Everything is in this novel including the kitchen sink. ‘Wolf Hall’ is the kind of historical fiction where the reader is supposed to get lost in the richness of the details of Tudor life. However, I would have preferred a little focus, some unifying point to the whole thing. King Henry may have had some fine rugs on the floor, but I really don’t need details about the weave. I didn’t want to get lost, I wanted to find something, a point or something, that wasn’t there.
Late Elizabethan portrait of Anne Boleyn, possibly derived from a lost original of 1533–36
I don’t know who the film makers will pick to play Thomas Cromwell, but only one actor todaycould do justice to King Henry VIII – Russell Crowe. It took Henry seven years of complex negotiations to divorce his wife of twenty years, Katherine, and marry Anne Boleyn. After that, Henry found a much more expedient method to change wives – beheading. Soon after the timeframe of ‘Wolf Hall’ ends, both Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were beheaded. Of course Anne Boleyn’s baby daughter grew up to become Queen Elizabeth of England where she has been reigning ever since.
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