'Wolf Hall' is so magnificent it is hard to know where to start. The contrast with other period pieces, both recent and past, is not even close--this book so outshines the competition. Mantel chooses to focus on Thomas Cromwell, pictured here in the most famous of renditions of his earthly being, rather than on other characters in the fame and folly that surrounded King Henry VIII and his break from the Catholic church and other shinanigans. this is not necessarily the key to the glorious production, but it does allow her to unravel all of the ambitions and hopes of the major plaers--the king, the church, the Boleyns, and all the rest.
Cromwell is familiar as a secondary figure to his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, in Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII”; a villainous antagonist to the noble Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons”; and the powerful fixer who enabled his king to repudiate the Roman Catholic Church in order to marry Anne Boleyn. But he has usually been overshadowed, perhaps for a lack of noble qualities and perhaps because much about his early life is unknown.
The Cromwell in 'Wolf Hall' is appreciated for his toughness, his keen political instincts, his financial acumen and his intimate knowledge of the workings of power. Almost unimaginable, in the midst of Henry’s impetuousness, Anne’s ambition and More’s self-righteous condescension, Cromwell emerges as the most sympathetic member of the wolf pack that prowls through the story.
This witty, densely populated book, while dealing with historical events of monumental importance, presents them in the form of conspiratorial small talk rather than action. A fall from grace may be represented by the uprooting of a household or the repainting of a coat of arms. None of these stylistic affectations is accidental. To deliberate effect, Ms. Mantel means to suggest that history itself is ever mutable and difficult to grasp. But her book’s main characters are scorchingly well rendered. And their sharp-clawed machinations are presented with nonstop verve in a book that can compress a wealth of incisiveness into a very few well-chosen words.
Wolf Hall is a magnificent achievement, in the first rank of historical fiction. Hilary Mantel protrays Thomas Cromwell as the most pragmatic and principled of men, steering his way through perilous times with integrity and courage. In keeping with the adage that good deeds seldom go unpunished, she elicits immense sympathy for both Cromwell and his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, two of Henry VIII's most loyal servants who both came to bad ends at the monarch's hands. And it's certainly about time someone brought Saint Thomas More (who also came to a bad end) down off his pedestal; the more you read about the English Reformation the less appealing the "man for all seasons" becomes.
ReplyDelete