Ploughing through Wolf Hall

[Mushroomwithaview]

It's extremely good. Probably one of the best books I've ever read. But by golly it's long and complicated. I tend to read at the end of the day when I'm tired and I often only manage a few pages at a time so it's not exactly zipping along.

Just wait till you start Bring Up the Bodies. The urgent brilliance is incredible. Not at all surprising she won the Booker twice.

It's wonderful, the Wolf Hall Trilogy are three of my favourite books. Wolf Hall regularly pops up on those "overrated books" threads and I am always astonished because I found it utterly captivating and ended up completely in love with Thomas Cromwell (and this is from a Catholic girl who has watched A Man for All Seasons multiple times!).

There are a lot of Thomas's though, it helps to have a decent grasp of the history. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

A LOT of Thomases!!

It's too late for me to edit my rogue apostrophe - so ashamed

Never read it but am currently watching it on iplayer.

I love Wolf Hall and BUtB so much that I still haven't been able to bring myself to read The Mirror and the Light 😥

Haha - I pondered if you were right or I was. I could have gone either way! Both look a bit wrong to me.

Love The Wolf Hall Trilogy. I haven't actually read anything as good or that I have enjoyed since it. I've reread them a few times now. There's a Wolf Hall slow reading group on Substack by Footnotes and Tangents that is really good (I'm part of it) and we get an explanation piece every Wednesday about the Characters and the few pages they are at. It's really interesting. It's called Wolf Crawl. I'm currently listening to it from the start on Audible. A few pages a night is plenty as long as your enjoying the writing

I put it off for a loooong time because I knew it would break my heart, which of course, it did.

Fabulous book but it takes some perseverance at the start - I’m about to start BUtB. Her writing is wonderful.

I read it when we were all stuck at home during lockdown. I have no idea why but I found it extremely comforting in those strange times!

Ploughing through isn't a great recommendation.

For my part, I found Wolf Hall a tedious read.

I found the dialogue clunky and I couldn't get past that.

I know. I'm in a minority.

It would be a dull world if we all liked the same things!

I love the trilogy so much; currently re-reading WH (on audible). I tend to re-read annually. Like a PP I fell for Cromwell in a big way, so much so my kids take the P whenever that period of history comes up. I took a long while to read the last book because I wanted to defer the pain of the ending. Mantel was a wonderful writer to make a man dead for 500 years seem so alive.

I'm a bit in love with TC too...love this trilogy, currently working through it a second time.

He is such a compelling man in her description. Razor-sharp, fearless, controlled, complex, deep, flawed. The increasingly flashes of hubris in Bring Up the Bodies pain me because I know where they lead.

Mantel's world is so lived-in: the complex reality of Henry, bright but spoiled; the hypocrisy of the nobility; the pleasures and privations of the 16th century; the majesty of the cardinal; the closeness and playfulness and petty competition of Cromwell's gang of young men. I sink into her world completely every time.

Wolf Hall was my least favourite of the three but once I got into it, I was hooked. I think just reading a few pages,before bed will kill it though, OP. You need to dedicate a bit of time during the day. I got it out the library on audio book too so I could listen to a few chapters while commuting.

Me too! I read wolf hall and BUTB really quickly but the final one is just sitting by my bed

I'm finding it really hard going, I was quite enjoying his early life and all ready for a nice few chapters of teenage adventures but it jumped forward 10 years just as I was getting into it.

(On the other hand I'm not wishing it was any longer!)

It took me two goes.
Once on holiday (and failed miserably, it's not a beach read) then, a couple of years later, I made it.
A diagram of the Thomases used as a bookmark helped, plus the hint from the 50 bookers that whenever "I" was used, it was your main man Thomas. 😁

One of my desert island books is A Place of Greater Safety by HM. Danton and Robespierre. Magnificent.

It's crazy, isn't it? That a character (even if they're a real person who died centuries ago) can come to mean so much to you that you can't bear to read a book he's in despite having loved the others.

The trilogy is excellent and long overdue a reread for me.

@DreadPirateRobots your username is from our family's favourite film of all time. Never get tired watching it

Wolf Hall is one of those novels you need to read in a certain way. Some books (and some writers) are like that. You need a guide, not just to the content but to the style. D. H. Lawrence is another good example. People read him as they would read other major English-British novelists (Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and so on). But if you read him in that way he’ll disappoint you.

I'm still going.
When I posted before I was at the neverending bit of him attending to Anne but before they went to Calais. It picked up enormously in Calais and has zipped along since then. Anne now pregnant for the second time (hinted, not confirmed).

I love love love when she writes...
He (Cromwell) blah blah blah...