...to find Wolf Hall really hard going

[catslave]

I like a period drama, really I do - but I'm sorry to say that Wolf Hall was incredibly dull. For starters: hopping about all over the place in time, miserable, one of history's most interesting characters - Anne Boleyn - was a spoilt cow with an 'Allo 'Allo accent...

Nothing was explained properly, either, apart form the blindingly obvious. Loads of shots of Cromwell's dad being a wrong'un, in case you missed it the first 20 times, then 'Oh, I need to be an MP again' (Cromwell). Eh? When were you an MP the first time?

I 'did' the Tudors at A-level 20 years ago, so my memory of the period is ok, but the specifics are fuzzy, and there's no way I'd remember the ins and outs of Thomas Cromwell's parliamentary career. Argh! I've cancelled series link... Or is it just me?

Loved the books, enjoying the series, am now finding cbeebies really hard going Flop, you are messing with my head now

Remus and the other HM disliker, could you say more about what you find so hard to stomach about her prose and characterisation? I'm a fan (though WH/BUtB are not her best novels) and though I can see, as any reasonable reader would, that no novel is going to be to everyone's taste, I find it less easy to understand accusations of 'incoherence'.

Is HM simply not to your taste as a reader, or do you genuinely see her work as seriously flawed?

I seriously think that her writing is flawed. It's ponderous and laboured, and I absolutely loathe the use of present tense in novels. I also think that the punctuation is inaccurate in places. The novel as a whole would have been passable if the tense was changed, but overall it needed much tighter editing, and culling by about 15%, I'd say.

Each to their own though. I won't read another of hers, but if other people enjoy them, that's great.

Agree with Remus Wolf Hall could have done with severe editing and culling, there are pages and pages of verbage that add nothing to the character or plot.

I love Wolf Hall and think it utterly brilliant, but I also agree that the structure is flawed, because it does drag at the start. Bring Up The Bodies is better.

She uses the present tense in her novels? Gawd, I'm glad I've never read her books - I find that so cumbersome, irritating and diverting that I'll immediately reject any author that does it. (I except Thomas Harris who manages to use it tactically and sparingly.)

But isn't preferring a shorter kind of novel, a simpler prose style and the use of the past tense your personal preference, rather than a writer who makes different decisions being 'objectively' bad, Remus? Not dissing your pov at all, but am interested in general in where we can (if we can at all!) draw lines between personal tastes and a novel that simply doesn't 'work'.

Like I can see intellectually how good Penelope Fitzgerald is, but I don't like her work at all, her sensibility is just not to my taste.

Emotions, could you give an example of the excess verbiage that particularly bothered you?

Countess, as if to prove my own point above, I think WH is a better novel than BUtB, which I find less satisfyingly structured, and scattered with little typos that should have been picked up in proof, which suggests a too-hasty edit to me...?

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

I seriously think that her writing is flawed. It's ponderous and laboured ...

So we'll see it on the GCSE Eng. Lit syllabus very soon, then .

Ceart I've not committed them to memory.

Also, it has nothing to do with preferring a shorter novel, the length of the novel is, to me, irrelevant it is the content and whether that content is necessary to the plot, theme, characters, setting the scene, invoking the era, etc., etc., but when it is just the outpourings of the author's fevered imagination about her main character and is superfluous to the story it just reads as an exercise it the author's own vanity.

I don't prefer a simpler prose style or shorter books, necessarily. I've read plenty of complex and/or very long books and have a degree in English Literature, and find the assumption that because people don't like, 'Wolf Hall' they must not like 'longer novels' or 'complex prose style' really rather patronising, as Emotionsecho said before.

The past tense thing, is, of course, a matter of personal preference, but it's one I absolutely can't forgive - it sets my teeth on edge. It's like when historians such as Lucy Worsley talk about historical events in the present tense: I really, really can't abide it.

There isn't any kind of measure to say whether a book is 'well written' or not, and every opinion must ultimately only be a personal one.

'Wolf Hall' must 'work' because it tells a story that some people enjoy enough to want to read the sequel to, but, for me, it 'doesn't work' because the writing style gets in the way of what should be a good story, and it becomes irritating and tedious.

....I really, really can't abide it......

Me neither.

I agree with emotion.

I have extremely poor capacity to follow a plot, and I am aware that this is partly why I cope well with Mantel - because I am used to finding I'm confused about who's who. If you have a strong mind for plots, I can see why she would be frustrating - not 'hard,' but frustrating. They're not the same thing.

Personally, I really like the way she doesn't signal who's speaking, because (and this is geeky), it's what books written at that time were like. They didn't use a lot of visual conventions to tell who's speaking, so you get used to speeches that run into each other a bit.

Again, though, I can totally see why people might find it tedious and irritating. It'd be awfully boring if we all liked the same things, and I know someone who's a very eminent specialist on this period and really dislikes Wolf Hall. He reckons it's pushing a dubious nationalist agenda, as I understand it.

• agree that it's patronizing, that is. I don't agree she's not a good writer, because I enjoy her, but I dislike the idea it's dim not to.

I loathe novels written in the present tense (well, I thought I did)

bought A Place Of Greater Safety ages ago without any previous awareness of HM (I was looking for Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy-Waterstones didn't have it, POGS was next to where it should have been and looked interesting so I thought I'd give it a shot)

I had read a chunk of it before I realised it was in the present tense- I think I must have been too busy being fascinated/baffled

it's a fabulous book imo. As is Wolf Hall. There's obviously huge amount of research done but it doesn't seem like she's burdened with it, iykwim (unlike some I could mention)

can't get on with Bring Up The Bodies though. No idea why

Very sorry if my post (which you quoted!) annoyed emotionsecho. There was a caveat in there, that even readers who know loads about the period, or who are very happy with complex material, might just loathe her style.

There are so many well-thought-of writers I find absolutely unreadable: John Banville, E Ennie Proulx, Will Self, Martin Amis, Tom Wolfe, Don DeLillo, Lori Moore... I could go on (and on)

I wonder if she ever regrets what Wolf Hall has become? The recognition, I mean, after all those years of plugging away at all that diverse stuff

she did appear to write what she wanted

(was just vaguely remembering about her having to put 'he, Cromwell' over and over in BUTB because everyone had complained about 'he' referring to Cromwell in WH. And then everyone complained about that instead )

Fair enough LowSlung, your comment was the most recent of several throughout the thread and I was just using it as an example of what I perceived to be an inference that those who disliked the book 'Wolf Hall' were somehow lacking in intellectual capacity, I was probably being a bit touchy, sorry.

I have do have a problem with HM's style. I love history, and particularly Tudor history which is full of interesting characters and politics. I am not overly keen on 'historical novels', however, I thought 'Wolf Hall' would be different as Thomas Cromwell is such an interesting and pivotal character of the period and HM was lauded for historical accuracy, research, etc., and yet the way the book was written was frustrating and disappointing in equal measure.

I think that writing in the present tense was an important choice, given what she was doing in the book.

Wolf Hall is not a 'period piece' or even a typical 'historical novel'. It is to my mind quite an extraordinary portrait of the interior life of a complex man, and it is made all the more fascinating by the fact that we as readers already think we know that man. He has a historical reputation. We also know what happened to him in the end.

I think that interplay between what we think we 'know' and the many different ways in which even the 'facts' can be interpreted is what gives the book its energy.

Writing in the past tense would have made it sound like a novelised but 'factual' account. Writing in the present tense allows us to interpret and reinterpret his actions and responses as we go along.

I really like that interpretation, friendly.

I think you are bang on, FriendlyLadybird.

I also agree with you, Friendly.

And, Muddha - I reckon you, too, are right. I don't think Hilary Mantell wrote Wolf Hall with a view to it being the success it has become. I think she is firstly a writer & is almost compelled to write.

Friendly has it absolutely. I'm not generally keen on historical novels: I don't really approve of the way in which they muddy the historical waters); but the view from the man she conceives of as Cromwell is fascinating, as is her alternative imagining of More. I think the television production is really good.

I have not read much of her other work: I loved "Beyond Black" but was bored stiff by "A Year on Gaza Street"

ohno....i may have to give it up, I KNEW Cromwell reminded me of someone last week...

and I spotted the likeness again when he was on the horse at the beginning....Lord Percy, from Blackadder.

Someone on my twitter has just said he reminds her of her dad.

I refrained from asking inappropriate questions about her dad's marital status.