Wolf Hall (2009)
Who wrote it?
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel (1952- ; active 1985- ), born Glossop, Derbyshire, UK. Born to parents of Irish descent but born in England, she was raised as a Catholic but lost her faith aged 12. She studied law, initially at London School of Economics but transferred to the University of Sheffield. After university, she worked in the social work department of a geriatric hospital and as a department store sales assistant. She married geologist Gerald McEwen in 1973, and over the course of the late 70s and 80s they lived in Botswana for 5 years and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for 4. While in Botswana she suffered from a severe form of endometriosis, with the ensuing surgery leaving her unable to have children.
She began writing a novel about the French Revolution in 1974 (eventually released in 1992 a A Place of Greater Safety), though her first published novel was 1985's Every Day is Mother's Day. From 1987-91 she blended her literary career with a job as film critic on The Spectator. Over the course of the following decades she accumulated a range of awards and nominations for her varied novels and short stories, notably the Cheltenham Prize for Fludd (1990) and the Hawthornden Prize for An Experiment in Love (1996). 2006's Beyond Black was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, but Wolf Hall marked her first Booker nod. She of course followed it with a second win for its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, in 2012. She received her damehood in 2014.
What's it about?
Wolf Hall is the first part of Mantel's trilogy telling a fictionalised version of the life of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister of Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540. This first novel covers the years 1500 to 1537, beginning with an account of Cromwell's youthful abuse at the hands of his blacksmith father, and ending with the execution of Thomas More, with Cromwell overseeing as one of the most powerful men in the country.
The novel details some of the steps on the way to this improbable rise to power, notably his position as the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, where he develops a reputation as a deal-maker. Wolsey falls from grace as a he fails to negotiate an annulment of the King's first marriage to Catherine of Aragon to facilitate his remarriage to Anne Boleyn. Despite this, Cromwell remains in favour with the King and increases his power. By the end of the novel, Boleyn has given birth to the future Queen Elizabeth, as well as miscarrying a second child, and the English Reformation is well underway, with Cromwell a key engineer of the process.
Through the novel we also see an intimate view of Cromwell's personal life, most notably when he loses his wife and two daughters in quick succession to the "sweating sickness". This contributes to Mantel's general project of humanising Cromwell, who was previously depicted in historical and literary accounts as calculating and unprincipled. Alongside the principle protagonists, the novel features a huge cast of fictionalised historical characters, from the artist Hans Holbein to the appearance of Henry's future wife Jane Seymour, as a young inhabitant of the titular Wolf Hall.
What I liked
You have to admire the richness and depth of the world-building. It’s a 650-page epic, which at first felt intimidating but eventually sucked me in to the extent that I deliberately slowed down my reading to avoid rushing it (too much!)
It’s evident that a huge amount of detailed research has gone into this, and it achieves its aim of making you feel like you’re in the thick of the action, living in sixteenth century London alongside these historical figures.
The exploration of Cromwell’s loss of his family to the “sweating sickness” felt both moving and timely to read in a still ongoing pandemic, and forced some speculation on how our modern crisis may be viewed differently if children were among the bulk of its victims.
There’s a huge amount to dig into here on the role of women in the monarchy - not just in the 16th century but in the present day too. Mantel attracted controversy for some of her comments around the Duchess of Cambridge in 2013, and its easy to see the parallels in her thinking.
It’s similarly interesting to look back on the novel in the light of Mantel’s criticism in some quarters for anti-Catholicism. It’s certainly hard to argue that this book presents Rome in anything but a negative light. Though at the same time, it’s clear that she’s not seeking to present Henry’s motivations as in any way pure…
What I didn’t like
It took me a while to get into it: I didn’t immediately “get” some of the interesting themes above; in fact some of them only really occurred when reading criticism afterwards. I approached this beast in something of a negative mindset, with a view that it was essentially extremely clever fan fiction for Henry VIII obsessives (an easy target, given how many of them exist!) - it took me a while to shake this and see that there was something more interesting going on.
It didn’t help that it’s not the easiest thing to follow if you aren’t already obsessed with the period. It’s not for nothing that it begins with an intimidatingly long list of characters and two near-incomprehensible family trees. While it’s plainly and lucidly written, with good momentum and even a lot of humour, there’s a lot of names (often very similar) to navigate and it’s a bit of a chore flipping back and forth trying to remember who’s who in relation to whom, etc.
An interesting one for me - I actually didn’t feel you got much of a sense of Henry VIII from this novel. Perhaps that’s the point, though. It’s Cromwell’s novel, and we’re clearly encouraged to see him as the main architect of much of what happens in this phase of history, even if we’re never left in any doubt as to the King’s ability to remove his power at any moment, or on any whim.
Food & drink pairings
Neverending feasts, of course.
The body and blood of Christ - OR IS IT THOUGH?!
Fun facts
Despite the novel’s status as clear favourite with the bookies and press, and its subsequent massive commercial success, it wasn’t a unanimous winner among the judges. It actually went down to a casting vote, with Lucasta Miller and Sue Perkins (?) arguing strenuously in favour of Coetzee’s Summertime, against two in favour of Mantel. John Mullan had the casting vote, and went for Wolf Hall as something more “extraordinary” than the Coetzee, who he felt could win in any year he released a novel (as he, of course, had already done twice). His preference was actually for Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger.
The novel has been a huge success, both commercially and critically. It's sold millions, won numerous awards (including the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction in 2010) and generally been the darling of critics. Not everyone agreed though. Susan Bassett in Times Higher Education was particular unamused, calling it..
"dreadfully badly written... Mantel just wrote and wrote and wrote. I have yet to meet anyone outside the Booker panel who managed to get to the end of this tedious tome."
Wolf Hall and its immediate sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, have been adapted for both stage and television. The first stage production was by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2013, which then transferred to London in 2014 and Broadway in 2015 with Ben Miles as Cromwell.
The BBC TV adaptation somehow managed to compress both novels into a six-part series, and featured an extremely starry cast including Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Damian Lewis as Henry VIII.
Vanquished Foes
A. S. Byatt (The Children's Book)
J. M. Coetzee (Summertime)
Adam Foulds (The Quickening Maze)
Simon Mawer (The Glass Room)
Sarah Waters (The Little Stranger)
A couple of big hitters in here, none of which I’ve read. The top two there at least feel like must-read-at-some-points, right?
The 2009 Orange/Women's Prize went to Home by Marilynne Robinson. There was no direct overlap with the Booker, though Wolf Hall was shortlisted in 2010.
Context
In 2009:
Collapse of Icelandic government and banking system in the wake of the ongoing financial crisis
Boko Haram uprising in Nigeria
Treaty of Lisbon comes into force
Hudson River "miracle" as US Airways flights ditches with no casualties
Sri Lankan civil war ends after more than a quarter century of fighting
H1N1 "Swine Flu" influenza pandemic
Greenland gains self rule
Parliamentary Expenses scandal in the UK
Creation of Bitcoin cryptocurrency
Death of Michael Jackson
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Avatar
Up
The Hangover
Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavillion
The xx, xx
Rihanna, Rated R
Life Lessons
The monarchy, it’s one rule for them and another one for the rest of us… Oh, that’s a bit obvious is it? Well now.
Nothing much changes really, does it?
Those royal family trees aren’t half complicated. I need a lie down after all that thinking.
Score
8
It’s undoubtedly a mammoth achievement, and literally could not be more different from many of the other Noughties winners (notably its highly contemporary predecessor The White Tiger) which is definitely a good thing. It’s not something I would normally have read, and while I’m grateful that I have, I’m not fully a convert to historical fiction.
Ranking to date:
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) - 9.5
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (1981) - 9.5
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee (1999) - 9.5
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004) - 9
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively (1987) - 9
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (2008) - 9
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth (1992) - 9
Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey (1988) - 9
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Life & Times of Michael K. - J. M. Coetzee (1983) - 9
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997) - 9
Schindler’s Ark - Thomas Keneally (1982) - 9
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai (2006) - 9
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2002) - 8.5
The Bone People - Keri Hulme (1985) - 8.5
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994) - 8.5
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2000) - 8
Possession - A. S. Byatt (1990) - 8
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (2009) - 8
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Sea - John Banville (2005) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (2003) - 7.5
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992) - 7.5
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980) - 7.5
The Gathering - Anne Enright (2007) - 7.5
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2001) - 7.5
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
Last Orders - Graham Swift (1996) - 7
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle (1993) - 6
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (1991) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
The Ghost Road** - Pat Barker (1995) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998) - 5
Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner (1984) - 4.5
The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (1986) - 4
*Read in later condensed edition.
**Third part of a trilogy of which I hadn’t read pts 1&2
Next up
Perhaps a little look back at the Booker in the Noughties? And then into a new decade with Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question.
