Book review, why not? I have read a book, therefore I can do a review of it. Rather than talk about the book in any great depth, I will spend 600 words slipping in casual references to other books, just to show how intelligent and learned I am compared to your feeble wits. This is how I understand book reviews to be accomplished. My problem with Wolf Hall is this: it is just lazy, lazy fiction. That is what historical fiction is. 'Well I can't be bothered/don't have the talent to think up a decent plot,' the author says, 'So I'll just nick one from history, complete with characters settings etc. etc. I'll flesh it out with my own style, stick in a few apt metaphors, like the ending of The Great Gatsby, where the light over the water signifies hope, or some shit.'
At times it reads like the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole. 'Got up, brushed teeth, visited King, read some highly illegal Lutheran works, was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Saw Joanne, she is fit. Reminds me of her sister. Oh yeah, I remember, her dead sister was my wife.' I kid you not. The present tense narration just comes off as a mess, while ambiguities are hailed as genius plot devices.
The author must have thought herself the height of cunning while writing the plot. Where is the tension? Why should I give a damn. Is this what wins the Man Booker Prize nowadays? Now we have to mention Hilary Mantel, in the same sentence as Salmon Rushdie, Iris Murdoch, William Golding and Kingsley Amis. And it was given the prize because, according to The Times, 'It is not like much else in contemporary British fiction.' Sigh.
Mantel told the Wall Street Journal she spent five years researching and writing the novel, which if true, is laughable. Basically reading any of the dozen or so works criticising G.E. Elton's work on the 16th century would do the job. About ten minutes will do the job.
Let us talk about the political machinations of the court. Yes. Them. Again, the problem is lack of depth. It is a pretty long book, but at times Mantel just gives you fragments of a 16th century newsletter interposed in her prose. The court seems to consist of a couple of servants, Anne Boleyn, her ladies-in-waiting, her uncle, her father, her brother, her uncle, and the King's brother-in-law.
Yes, the Byzantine nature of the Henrician court really keeps the reader on edge. I am sort of told, or expected to believe that anyone in a position of power has the Sword of Damocles dangling above them, and one slip could mean they are skewered. Cromwell is not really that much of a likeable character, so the only way we feel into the book if we are scared for Cromwell, if we fear the King might give him the chop. But we do not, and therefore, in short order, the book flops. The King meanwhile, King Henry VIII that is, sounds from Cromwell's description of him, much the same as John Rohl's portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II, taken by flights of fancy, and never able to settle. Perhaps that is just me.
Some of the comments about the book just make my mind boggle. The Observer said the following, 'It is that supple movement between laughter and horror that makes this rich pageant of Tudor life her most mundane and bewitching novel.' Perhaps this statement makes sense, or maybe its' author was still suffering from brain freeze after reading WH.
I get the feeling scanning over some of the reviews that some of the critics have simply not enjoyed the book, but have fawned over it anyway, just so they do not get caught out as everyone else hails it as a masterpiece. I suppose these are the sort of people that pass for literary critics nowadays. I imagine they annoy their editors by asking dumb questions such as: Are Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks brothers or father and son?
Also Mantel looks a bit crazy. Can I hold that against her?
And the lame duck ending sucks. Read away masochists, read away!
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