Wolf Hall

I couldn’t finish, but I’m writing a review anyway because I put in a good 200 pages of effort and I earned it. I just couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. The chronology is all over the place, but everything is written in present tense. It’s written mostly in third-person, but occasionally slips into second-person. There are a LOT of characters, but they are mostly all named Thomas or Anne. I often felt like I was thrown into the middle of events, before I understood the characters, with the expectation that it would all make sense in retrospect. In short, I think this book requires an extremely high level of focus to appreciate, which I don’t think I’m in a place to be able to give it. I don’t remember the last time I didn’t finish a book, but I literally started getting angry as I tried to read it. It won the Booker Prize in 2009 and seems to be on all kinds of best books of the 21st century lists, so clearly I’m missing something. Will have to come back to it another time.

Book author: Hilary Mantel