My Head Is Full of Books: My One Big Book 2024 Challenge Review -- WOLF HALL

Friday, August 2, 2024

My One Big Book 2024 Challenge Review -- WOLF HALL

Back in 2009 Hilary Mantel published a book, Wolf Hall, about the rise of Thomas Cromwell in the court of King Henry VIII during the time period when Henry wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, so he could marry Anne Boleyn. It seemed like everyone at the time of Wolf Hall's publishing read the book, everyone except me I confess. It was massively popular, even winning the Booker Prize that year. James Naughtie, the chairman of the Booker Prize judges, said the decision to give Wolf Hall the award was "based on the sheer bigness of the book."

I didn't know this reason when I selected Wolf Hall as my One Big Book of 2024. I selected Wolf Hall because people are still talking about it today, it has a mini-series made from it, there are two sequels, and most importantly, I am fascinated by the story of Henry's six wives. I purchased the audiobook in early January and then dithered around, waiting until July to start it. My husband, who has a greater knowledge of the historical events covered in the book than I, joined me in the 20+ hours of listening "enjoyment" of Wolf Hall on two closely related in time car trips.

Let's be clear, when I said I didn't know much about the historical events of the early 1530s, I am not exaggerating. I knew about Henry's divorce/annulment of his marriage to Catherine which caused a schism in the church, causing England to break from the Catholic denomination and to set up the King (or Queen) of England as the head of Church of England. (What could go wrong?) I also knew that one divorce is never enough and in Henry's case his quest for a son/heir led him to marry six women. The fates of these six queens can be summed up this way: Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived (from Six: The Musical). I honestly didn't know who Thomas Cromwell was and I got him goofed up with his nephew Oliver Cromwell who played a big role in British politics in the mid 1600s. Even though Wolf Hall is based on actual historical events and the characters were real people, it is a work of fiction. That said, the book does seem to be fairly accurate and one can believe the conversations between the characters probably occurred in roughly the way the book has them laid out.

I wish I could say that I, like so many readers for the past fifteen years, was completely caught up in the story, but that isn't true. I really struggled with the book and found that my attention just seemed to wander away as the narrator of the book, Ben Miles, read on and on and on. Here is what I think were the sticking points:

Wolf Hall was probably a bad choice to consume as an audiobook. The production time was 25.5 hours. We bumped up the listening speed but it still required over 20 hours of listening. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep at some points in the story and zoned out in other parts.
One of the reasons the audio format didn't work well for me was the sheer number of characters I had to keep track of. When I got confused and couldn't remember who so-and-so was, I couldn't turn back a few pages to remind myself. And the action takes place mostly through dialogue or in Cromwell's head...not exactly riveting stuff.
The overuse of "he" or "he, Cromwell" led to my confusion at first and irritation later. The book is highly dependent on dialogue to tell the story and there were often great long passages of it throughout the book without breaks. After what I imagine was pages of dialogue it was really hard to figure out who "he" was. Mantel must have realized this at some point so she would throw in a "he, Cromwell," to get us back on track. But that was irritating, too. Why not just say, "Cromwell said..." instead? Take a look at the reviews on Goodreads. I am not the only reader who complained about this point. It actually got to the point where my husband and I would point it out to each other. "There's another 'He, Cromwell'", we'd remark. It became a joke of sorts. I have to confess, however, the dialogue and the use of "he" really made the book feel quite intimate. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but found it compelling on that point.

In the end my husband appreciated the book more than I did. He was driving, which hopefully meant he didn't zone out like I did, so the story probably was richer and fuller for him than me. When I mentioned there were two sequels, his eyes lit up. Mine rolled. He didn't rule out reading them on his own time. I'm done. All I want to do is go see the Musical Six one more time. That's about all the information about the Cromwells and the Tutors I want to know about.

Six: The Musical. The Tony Award performance.

In addition to completing my ONE BIG BOOK challenge for 2024, Wolf Hall also contributes to two other reading challenges -- Big Book Summer Challenge, since it weighs in at over 650 pages, and it is the 16th book on the 20 books of Summer challenge.