Wolf Hall, take one

[tempestsarekind]

I'm going to go ahead and post the last couple of things I've written about trying to read Wolf Hall recently (I figure I should try to read it before I see the miniseries? I have until April - which is when PBS is airing it), even though I am kind of embarrassed by them (why can I not appreciate this book that everyone else in the world loves?

Comments

[a_t_rain]

I loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, but I can definitely see why someone wouldn't -- the style is idiosyncratic in ways that I can imagine a different reader might find very grating.

[tempestsarekind]

Oddly enough, writing the second post helped a bit - because it reminded me that this is a recurring issue with me, and as such, it's not unique to my reaction to this book. :) Sometimes great books are not for every reader!

[litlover12]

I liked the book (though I prefer More to Cromwell! :-) ) but I do see your point!

[tempestsarekind]

I haven't even gotten as far as More yet…but I haven't heard good things about his portrayal. :)

[tempestsarekind]

Hmm…maybe I'll have to find more time to read it in chunks, then!

I think my real problem is not that the language is contemporary, or that she doesn't spend time reveling in scenery; it's that when she does mention those things, it's to point out how weird or funny they are. The diction is where I'm finding that disconnect really hard to deal with. The scene that prompted the second post was a scene in which one character (Gardiner?) wants to mock someone (Thomas Boleyn) and play up the ridiculousness of the "theater" that happened between Boleyn and Wolsey. Not only does Gardiner turn the dialogue between them into an improvised play as he tells Cromwell about what happened, but he reports Boleyn's language by using words like "thou," when Mantel avoids that language elsewhere. That just rings as peculiar to me, and kept jolting me out of the scene: there are plenty of things that one Tudor speaker might mock another one for, but using the perfectly ordinary pronoun "thou" is not one of those things! It seems to me that you could '

[liseuse]

I really loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies but I definitely appreciated Wolf Hall more after I'd read Bring Up the Bodies, as did a couple of other people I know who've read both (I think it is a combination of having accustomed yourself to not being entirely sure who is speaking and there being less history to cram into Bring ...). Trying to read Wolf Hall in short segments didn't work for me at all - I only got through it on my second try when I had a) an electronic copy as well as a paper copy and b)time to sit on my bed and just *read* for a considerable chunk of time.

[tempestsarekind]

The consensus seems to be that reading it a little at a time is not a good idea! Maybe I'll postpone the reading until Spring Break.