Full disclosure: I really struggled with Wolf Hall, and wasn't totally sold on reading it even going in. However, in an effort to branch out from books that I would usually read, and also due to the combination of it being named one of the best books of the month on Amazon and winning the Man Booker prize, I put it on hold at the library and did my best to keep an open mind. Honestly, I really wanted to like it. It's gotten so many good reviews, and I do think that the history behind it is at least somewhat interesting. Advertised as a novel addressing Thomas Aquinas, a lawyer and advisor to Henry VIII throughout the Anne Boleyn matter, I thought this would be a good way for me to try something different, and maybe learn more about a topic I know very little about.
A good plan in theory, right? Too bad it backfired in my face spectacularly.
My first thought upon opening Wolf Hall? “Dear Lord.” I’m not sure there’s anything that makes me want to read a book less than when it opens with four pages of a cast of characters and a family tree. The total 532 pages didn’t bother me, I’ve read Harry Potter books bigger than that, but the sheer number of characters just thrown at you right away is overwhelming. Immediately I was put off by it. Honestly, an author doing that is one of my pet peeves about any book, even one that I’m not already a little hesitant about reading. In my opinion, if you need to start your book by spewing every character in the story at the reader, you aren’t doing a good job introducing us to the novel and won’t be introducing the characters well either. I have less of a problem with this when it’s at the end, if it’s more of a reference just in case it seems less necessary, and therefore gives me more confidence.
I had four main problems with the book:
1. Despite the four pages of characters, I never had any idea who anyone was, who was talking, or what/who was even being talked about. Hilary Mantel skips from first names to last names to titles interchangeably and it is obnoxious. And none of this was helped by her incessant use of “he” without further elaboration, and only occasional use of quotation marks.
2. The book reads more like non-fiction, which I have always been impatient with. Flat out, I do not like non-fiction unless it is written like a novel or has a subject matter that I am very interested in. Two strikes against this book. I need a story to follow and a plot to get into or I lose interest rapidly. Hilary Mantel’s writing style is disjointed at best, scatterbrained at worst. I couldn’t follow anything, and have never been so frustrated and confused with a book.
3. I don’t think it helped me any that I only knew the bare bones story of Henry VIII going in. It seems as if Mantel just expects you to know what is happening, and when she drops a year in, to know what has transpired, because:
4. The first 125 pages or so are not chronological.
It was these four problems that pretty much ended Wolf Hall’s chance for me to enjoy it. They were insurmountable. After slogging through the first two parts of the book, I skimmed over the table of contents and realized that the remaining portions seemed to go in chronological order. Hoping that the book would improve from there, I decided to give it 50 more pages from that point.
It did not improve. I hated it just as much. It is not enjoyable. It is tedious. And reading it I felt the way I imagine most people who don't like to read feel. Like you'd rather be doing anything else. Finally, after realizing that despite wanting nothing more than to read for awhile, I wasn't doing it because I was not even remotely interested in reading any more Wolf Hall, I gave up on it.
0- I don’t think it’s fair for me to rate this, even giving it a 1 (waste of time) seems incorrect, because I didn’t finish it. I didn't waste all the time I could have on it, and who even knows what could have happened in the second half? I was not interested in finding out, and that fact alone is the most telling of how much I didn’t like it. I can’t think of more than one or two times I haven’t finished a book that I’ve started.
Next up: a book called Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, recommended by my mom.
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