This year the Booker Prize winner is intriguing. Over the past decade Booker finalists and winners have often been Irish, Indian, South African or Canadian, Now, for the first time in many years, an English author residing in the U.K. has received the award for a novel about…. England.

Hilary Mantel has written an English novel in the traditional sense of this word. A great number of individuals and political events are united in a dense plot which the writer carefully uncoils as she recreates for her readers the England of the Tudors, a nation not yet fully formed, living under a rapidly evolving political system, with religious institutions at a crossroads and a ruler who was hesitant in his actions.

All of this reflected tragically on the existence of the people. But executions and deprivations did not stop the advance of society. Intellectual life did not come to a halt. The stubborn efforts of people to improve their lives did not diminish.

The dense 650-page novel tells us about the turbulent epoch of Henry VIII. In the center of the novel there are three main characters: Henry; his adviser, Cardinal Wolsey; and Thomas Cromwell, a brilliant politician who had risen to power from the lower classes of the society and under King Henry held many important positions. At the end of his life he had become Chancellor. Thomas Cromwell’s main achievement was helping Henry to consolidate his power and achieve his goal of marrying Anne Boleyn.

At the time, the king was married for over 20 years, yet still had no male issue. There was a daughter, Mary, from his wife, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. If he died without a male heir, the country could be engulfed in civil war.

Usually we read books about Henry and his six wives with tales of love affairs, feelings, ambitions, a tangle of many elements where Anne Boleyn is presented merely as one of the victims. Here the author’s attention is concentrated on the political issues and the man who was involved in all of them.

The country and the whole of Europe were thrown into disarray by Henry’s desire to annul his marriage to Catherine. His compatriots took sides; countries and kings took sides. The majority was for Catherine, but Thomas Cromwell supported Henry and worked hard to get a divorce from the Pope. Gradually he led Henry through the process of breaking away from the Pope, from Catholicism, from the power of the church and monasteries and from Parliament. He encouraged the king to consolidate his power.

The author provides a vivid portrait of life in those days in a rigid society where it took courage and a lot of maneuvering to climb the social ladder under the ever present threat of plague or arrest.

Hilary Mantel takes just a few years in the life of a brilliant self-made man. She briefly shows him in his youth, with his family, running away from the cruelty of his blacksmith father and going abroad to join a foreign army. Then she moves straight to his adulthood, when he returned to England as a successful lawyer – learned and well-traveled, taken into employment by the cardinal to act as his adviser.

This very gap of 20 years in the background of the protagonist is the weak point in the construction of the novel. During this period a blacksmith’s son becomes a famous lawyer. Five hundred years ago that was an extraordinary achievement.

Thomas Cromwell returns to England after having lived for many years on the Continent where he got an education, learned several European languages including ancient Greek and Latin, established close relations with Florentine bankers and Flemish merchants and grew rich. Now he is a married man who lives in his own house at Austin Friars. His brilliance and political perceptiveness have persuaded Cardinal Wolsey to take him into his employ. But how did the two of them meet? Where did Cromwell learn those languages? How was he educated? All of this is unclear and the questions mount.

Apart from that curious gap, readers will admire the author’s craftsmanship, her erudition, her hard work putting together so many different elements to form a coherent creation. She shapes long dialogues where the protagonists discuss important questions like faith or philosophy or the refinement of Erasmus’ letters.

The main source for the author was the chronicle written by George Cavendish: Thomas Wolsey, late Cardinal, his Life and Death. Mr. Cavendish was the gentleman usher under the Cardinal and after the death of Wolsey retired to the country. During the four years he was working at this chronicle, he described the personality of the Cardinal and gave a portrait of Thomas Cromwell. Thanks to the true to life and honest descriptions of the events he witnessed, as well as his devotion to the Cardinal, the chronicle has not lost its popularity 500 years later. It is generally considered that it influenced the later writings of William Shakespeare.

Wolf Hall is a brilliant novel. Yet I would like to add one reservation. It is not a typical bestseller or a page turner. The author’s attitude of impartiality discourages the reader from having any sympathy or feelings towards the protagonist. Even at such dramatic moments as the death of his wife and young daughters carried away by the plague, she does not try to make things exciting.

Personally, I like novels where I feel sympathy for someone, take his or her side and follow the events nervously, wishing them well. Here the protagonists are all playing at intrigue, including Anne Boleyn. Surprisingly, Henry comes out looking rather decent. He is clever and he is madly in love and ready to do anything to get his lady.

One can say that Wolf Hall is a surprising mixture of an historical novel and a history textbook. We have real historical personages before us. At the same time, the author gives us invented dialogues and what she imagines were their inner thoughts and feelings. The question arises how far one can go in forming a portrait of a historic personage. Hilary Mantel has largely succeeded in this task.

ABOUT THE NOVEL’S TITLE

The novel is named after one of the residences where Henry and Anne Boleyn spent six days together in July 1535. The novel ends at the moment when Thomas Cromwell was planning the royal couple’s journey around the country which would culminate in this tryst. Wolf Hall belonged to the family of the Seymours, and later on Jane Seymour became another of Henry’s wives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hilary Mantel is the author of 11 books and a winner of several literary prizes, beginning in 1987. She was born in 1952 and has lived in Africa and Saudi Arabia. In her novels she has dealt with family dramas and turning points of European history. Her 1992 novel about the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety, was named Novel of the Year.