"It is a famous portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger: Thomas Cromwell in his finery, about 1534, looking formidable and clutching a piece of paper while he sits at a desk that holds the implements he used to write Henry VIII’s correspondence and draft Henry VIII’s laws. In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel’s arch, elegant, richly detailed biographical novel centered on Cromwell, she has used Holbein’s delivery of the portrait as the basis for a dagger-sharp moment of truth . . . It is Ms. Mantel’s velvet-gloved delivery of such devastating observations, her book’s broad historical sweep and her counterintuitive choice to make Cromwell its primary focus that have helped make Wolf Hall a widely favored contender for this year’s Man Booker Prize . . . Her book’s main characters are scorchingly well rendered. And their sharp-clawed machinations are presented with nonstop verve in a book that can compress a wealth of incisiveness into a very few well-chosen words . . . Ms. Mantel also has improbable success in reinventing Anne Boleyn. Or at least she succeeds in newly underscoring Anne’s debt to Niccolo, as this book’s characters refer to Machiavelli. With the king’s friends, Cromwell notices: 'Anne is brittle in their company, and as ruthless with their compliments as a housewife snapping the necks of larks for the table. If her precise smile fades for a moment, they all lean forward, anxious to know how to please her. A bigger set of fools you would go far to seek.' And when Anne bears a daughter who can seemingly never inherit the throne (though she will of course grow up to be Queen Elizabeth I), Ms. Mantel provides a prime example of acerbic flair. The baby is described as 'an ugly, purple, grizzling knot of womankind, with an upstanding ruff of pale hair and a habit of kicking up her gown as if to display her most unfortunate feature.' Deft and diabolical as they are, Ms. Mantel’s slyly malicious turns of phrase would count for little more than banter if they could not succinctly capture the important struggles that have set her characters to talking. But she is able to place Cromwell on plausibly familiar terms with royalty and on a fair moral footing with More, that paragon of self-sacrifice . . . Wolf Hall is far too tricky a book to let Cromwell’s pronouncement be taken at face value. He is, after all, the king’s wily advocate. And he is never without an agenda. But this much is certain: More’s downfall has been assured by the time Cromwell finishes with him. Cromwell’s troubles, which will be no less lethal, are barely stirring when Wolf Hall ends. It is to be hoped that Ms. Mantel makes Cromwell’s endgame part of her future."Janet Maslin, The New York Times
A brilliant historical novel focused on the rise to power of a figure exceedingly unlikely, on the face of things, to arouse any sympathy at all . . . This is a novel too in which nothing is wasted, and nothing completely disappears.”Stephen Greenblatt, The New York Review of Books
Whether we accept Ms Mantel’s reading of history or not, her characters have a lifeblood of their own . . . a Shakespearean vigour. Stylistically, her fly-on-the-wall approach is achieved through the present tense, of which she is a master. Her prose is muscular, avoiding cod Tudor dialogue and going for direct modern English. The result is Ms Mantel’s best novel yet.”The Economist
A novel both fresh and finely wrought: a brilliant portrait of a society in the throes of disorienting change, anchored by a penetrating character study of Henry’s formidable advisor, Thomas Cromwell. It’s no wonder that her masterful book just won this year’s Booker Prize . . . [Mantel’s prose is] extraordinarily flexible, subtle, and shrewd.”Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
"Mantel has filled in the blanks plausibly, brilliantly. Wolf Hall has epic scale but lyric texture. Its 500-plus pages turn quickly, winged and falconlike. Trained in the law, Mantel can see the understated heroism in the skilled administrator's day-to-day decisions in service of a well-ordered civil societynot of a medieval fief based on war and not, heaven help us, a utopia . . . Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is both spellbinding and believable."Christopher Benfey, The New York Times Book Review
[Mantel’s] interest is in the question of good and evil as it applies to people who wield great power. That means anguish, exultation, deals, spies, decapitations, and fabulous clothes . . . She always goes for color, richness, music. She has read Shakespeare closely. One also hears the accents of the young James Joyce.”Joan Acocella, The New Yorker
Mantel’s abilities to channel the life and lexicon of the past are nothing short of astonishing. She burrows down through the historical record to uncover the tiniest, most telling details, evoking the minutiae of history as vividly as its grand sweep. The dialogue is so convincing that she seems to have been, in another life, a stenographer taking notes in the taverns and palaces of England.”Ross King, Los Angeles Times
Instead of bringing the past to us, [Mantel's] writing, brilliant and black, launches us disconcertingly into the past. We are space-time travelers landed in an alien world . . . history is a feast whose various and vital excitements and intrigues make the book a long and complex pleasure.”Richard Eder, The Boston Globe
Historical fiction at its finest, Wolf Hall captures the character of a nation and its people. It exemplifies something that has lately seemed as mythical as those serpent princesses: the great English novel.”Bloomberg News
"[Mantel] wades into the dark currents of 16th century English politics to sculpt a drama and a protagonist with a surprisingly contemporary feel . . . Wolf Hall is sometimes an ambitious read. But it is a rewarding one as well.”Marjorie Kehe, The Christian Science Monitor
The story of Cromwell’s rise shimmers in Ms. Mantel’s spry intelligent prose . . . [Mantel] leaches out the bones of the story as it is traditionally known, and presents to us a phantasmagoric extravaganza of the characters’ plans and ploys, toils and tactics.”Washington Times
There are no new stories, only new ways of telling them. Set during Henry VIII’s tumultuous, oft-covered reign, this epic novel . . . proves just how inspired a fresh take can be. [Mantel] is an author as audacious as Anne [Boleyn] herself, imagining private conversations between public figures and making it read as if she had a glass to the wall.”People Magazine
Fans of historical fictionor great writingshould howl with delight.”USA Today
This masterwork is full of gems for the careful reader. The recurring deta...
