Hilary Mantel won the Booker for the sequel to Wolf Hall. I just got Wolf Hall out of the library a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been reading it, and…
I don’t like it. I not only don’t like it, I also think it’s not very good. I don’t think it’s terrible; I’ve seen far worse; but I don’t think it’s very good. I think it’s padded, the way so much “literary” fiction is padded. I’m increasingly allergic to padded literary fiction.
Plus she has this weird thing where you’re supposed to get that an oddly non-specific “he” in any particular passage is always Cromwell, except the trouble with that is that there are often other “he”s in the passage and it really isn’t as clear which she means as she apparently intended it to be. Or maybe she didn’t bother about it. At any rate it turns out that that doesn’t work very well. I wonder why she thought it would.
Overall it’s just boring. It should be good material but she makes it boring. The opening scene is far from boring, but then after that…Boredom.
Anyone else bored by it? (Jean Kazez tweeted her dislike of it yesterday, and a couple of us chimed in.) Any defenders?
It should be good material but she makes it boring.
I’m with you entirely with this. I’ve tried twice to get into the audiobook and may try again. It should be something I’ll like.
Meanwhile, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was a delight to listen to.
Stella
I was absolutely blown away by “Wolf Hall”. Completely gripped from the opening paragraph till the last. Didn’t want it to end. I read a lot and only occasionally do I think ‘this is on another level entirely’. I found the style careful and precisely weighted, full of menace, brooding, suspense, and danger – such as a lock having a click like the “snap of a small bird’s bone” or the February wind like “a knife in the face”. I felt I could taste the fears and smell the intrigues of Tudor England. What I think I found most impressive was the way in which she manages to tell a history that ‘every school boy knows’ and yet still make it seem like the future wasn’t inevitable, that the direction of history was still up for grabs, and fully dependant upon chance, chaos and contingency. (I think writing in the present tense and through Cromwell’s eyes contributes to this effect. I didn’t find it hard to follow.) Best novel I’d read for years. But that’s taste for you: what flawed me leaves the next cold.
Loved it. The style took me a bit to get used to, but once in, I lived there. It was my world for the week it took to read. And her current book is the same, even better, according to some. If I can quiet my distracted brain, and get off the web, I’ll be back in Cromwell’s time.
Sorry – but I loved it. Read it twice in fact. Live in London – very close to where much it happened and I was utterly gripped. Can’t wait to read the sequel but can’t really afford it at day 1 prices.
It’s perhaps fair to say I might nt be the most discerning reader – but I found it was much better written than most modern literature. Loved the destruction of those otherwise national heroes who were in fact murderous theocrats.
The New Yorker’s highly favorable (and non-paywalled) review of Bring Up the Bodies is here
I loved it too – the sensual detail was amazing. I felt so immersed. I’m very excited that the next one is out!
I do have quite a tolerance for slow pace. I’m a fast reader, which probably helps. I find it lushly detailed, rather than tedious.
Interesting. Maybe I’ll try again. It’s not due for awhile.
It’s not that I hate a slow pace. It’s not that I hate lush. There is for instance A S Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden – I love that one, and it’s dense as all hell.
But I haven’t liked more recent Byatt. I think she knew how to do it in the past, and now doesn’t.
Or there’s Middlemarch. Slow pace! But I’ve read it many times and expect to again. Or Portrait of a Lady.
But this one…meh. But I’ll try again.
I read some Pepys last night. That was fun.
Keep it up! More book chat.
I love Pepys. His honesty, his insightfulness, and his political acuity are what make him fun. And fun is the right word to describe his writing, even when he’s talking about things like the Great Fire of London.
“Keep it up! More book chat.”
“Herman Melville books celebrated by Google doodle on 161st anniversary of Moby Dick’s release”: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/18/herman-melville-books-celebrated-by-google-doodle-on-161st-anniversary-of-moby-dicks-release/
Everyone has heard the opening line, “Call me Ishmael.” but who has read the novel to the end?
Yes the Moby Dick doodle made me smile.
I’ve read it to the end, but it was a long time ago.
I like it though. He shared my enthusiasm for Sir Thomas Browne, and it has that 17th century baroqueness. I love that.
Now that is lushness. Wolf Hall, not so much.
Absolutely loved Wolf Hall, but I am not a reader of serious fiction 🙂
Hah! I seem to have successfully created a FTB login. All in order to leave this inane comment.
I have heard good things about Wolf Hall and the comments left here further encourage me to read it. Two Hilary Mantel’s I have tried are Fludd and A Change of Climate. I loved Fludd. It was quirky and weird, the characters leapt out of the page and the feel (I’m sure there’s a more intellectual word for this) of the location of the story was wonderfully evoked. A Change of Climate, however, I struggled to get into and ultimately gave up. It was so gloomy! Gloomy weather, gloomy houses, gloomy people. I suppose it did not help that the story was partially set in South Africa in the dark days – being South African myself this meant that a sense of impending doom was ever present. I suppose the author must be commended, however, on her extremely successful creation of that sense of dreadful unease.