As I have mentioned maybe a few times :) I studied history at the university and already before that, ever since I was seven and visited London for the first time, I was fascinated by the history of the British Isles. Picture the under 10 year old me trying to learn the family trees of English royalty by heart. And not noly the current royal family, but family trees of medieval kings and queens. Yes, I know, I had weird interests as a child! :) At one point (a few years later) I also could name every African nation and its capital by heart, but that is another story altogether, as is the fact that as a toddler a sure way to get me eat my meal was to give me a collection of nuts and bolts form my Dad's toolkit to play with...
But back to British history. As interested as I was, and still am, in British history I have never thought Henry VIII with his six wifes especially interesting. Of all the Henrys, no 2 used to be the one I most wanted to read about, or rather about his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and their sons Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland. However, when Hilary Mantel's junkster of a novel Wolf Hall was published I heard so many good things about it that I was intrigued. I received a copy as a Christmas present in 2009 and meant to read the book soon, but as so often happens, other books, shorter books, came between me and Wolf Hall and it was only last month that I finally read the novel. This was also very good timing, as the sequal Bring Up the Bodies is going to be published this week. There will also be a third book later to complete the trilogy.
Wolf Hall follows Thomas Cromwell from a boy mistreated by his father to the right-hand man of Cardinal Wolsey to King Henry's most important advisor. Most of the book is set in the years when Henry VIII wants to divorce his first wife Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.
What I enjoyed most was the way Mantel made me as a reader care for her main character Cromwell. The way his personal losses were portrayed was very touching. In his job he was evidently an imposing character, maybe an opportunist, but definitely, at least at that point in his live, a survivor.
Mantel's writing is worth all the praise she's got for this novel. One could really see and feel, almost smell, the early 16th century world she painted with words for us. I sometimes get bored or distracted with long novels, not so with this one! Wolf Hall is one of the most ambitious, but also one of the best historical novels I have ever read, and believe me, I have read lots of historical fiction!
After reading Wolf Hall I am still not a fan of Anne Boleyn, but Henry VIII has grown on me a bit and I would dearly like to read more about Thomas Cromwell. I actually had to take a peak on Wikipedia to learn about his later life as I did not remember what happened to him. Now I kind of wish I hadn't done that. Bring Up the Bones goes straight into my TBR list. It goes also into my books-to-buy-list. But next Mantel for me will be A Place of Greater Safety, her almost 900 page novel about the French Revolution!
I read Wolf Hall for RoofBeamReader's TBR Pile Challenge.
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