Wolf Hall tells the story of the ending of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he can marry Anne Boleyn instead, and how this leads to the English Reformation. We follow these events through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, minister to Henry VIII and mastermind of England’s break with Catholicism.

Cromwell is a low-born lawyer/businessman/accountant, which would make him an unlikely hero in any case. He was, from what I’ve understood, a hated man during his lifetime, and is usually cast as somewhat of a villain in this whole affair. Here he is presented as a caring and enlightened man, taking care of widows and orphans, trying to save heretics from being burned and so on.

The story already existed, of course, and gave Mantel a lot for free, so to say: colourful personalities and tumultuous historical events. But she really brings them to life, makes it all funny, lyrical, personal; every sentence is exquisite. I took great care to read it slowly and savour every paragraph, wanting to make it last. It took me a few weeks but unfortunately I still ran out of pages in the end.

The book is extraordinarily vivid even though there are almost no visual descriptions of anything. It feels like no time has passed since this all happened: I can picture myself there among those people. The smells, the heat, the fear of disease. It must all rest on excellent research, but she uses her knowledge of those times subtly and never even gets close to didactic exposition. In fact I could have used more facts at times, and had to turn to Wikipedia for help with keeping track of all those people.

The Wolf Hall that gives the book its title is the seat of the Seymours, among those Jane Seymour, who will be Henry’s next wife. Wolf Hall is barely mentioned in this book so it is pretty obvious that a sequel is in the works. I can’t help thinking of the rhyme: “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”, and I am anxiously looking forward to seeing events unfold.

I am very very glad I read this book and will certainly look for more of Hilary Mantel’s works.

Adlibris, Amazon UK, Amazon US.