I really enjoyed Wolf Hall after an initial struggle to get into the writing style and connect with the main character. Wolf Hall is an historical novel and fictionalized biography about Thomas Cromwell, an advisor to Henry VIII. The prose is beautiful and engaging, and Mantel’s writing style is unique and interesting in a way that I enjoyed.
Mantel’s work is heavy on detail and I cannot imagine the amount of research that went into accurately recreating the world of Cromwell in Henry VIII’s court. The former history major in me is exhausted just thinking about how much she must have worked to bring to life all of the real characters of the court 500 years after their deaths.
The rich detailing and extremely detailed account of (part of) Cromwell’s life is engaging, but it also means the book clocks in at nearly 700 dense pages.
Wolf Hall is the first in a trilogy that was completed in 2020, and I expect I will read the rest of the trilogy soon.