I'm finally going to read Mantel's trilogy. I wanted to let some time lapse after reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s biography of Cromwell, in which book I lingered, enjoying it very much. Looking forward to the novels now. Wolf Hall's on tap for the month of May.
Until then I'm reading the two novels (so far) by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Harmless like You and her newer one, Starling Days. Liking the first one had made me pre-order the second.
The Wolf Hall trilogy is superb, and Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography of Thomas Cromwell is not just the best modern account, but also the best account, period, of the life of Thomas Cromwell.
Also worthy of note is the deep and mutually respectful relationship - and, indeed, friendship, between himself and Hilary Mantel, mentioned frequently with warmth by both of them. She is now viewed as a peer - and a serious scholar - by any serious scholar of Tudor England, simply one who operates in a slightly different medium.
Oddly, to my mind, the most difficult section of all three books is to be found in the first fifty pages of Wolf Hall; once you get past that, it falls into place, and somehow, just "clicks".
Actually, I think that the second book is better than the first - probably because Hilary Mantel is (or has become) so comfortable and confident with her characters, pacing, structure and material.
And, by the third book, she has mastered matters so thoroughly that there are sections of dialogue (or asides) that are both laugh out loud funny, yet historically (and character wise) remain completely credible. And I love her mastery of - and fidelity to - historical sources.
Worth noting, is that in the first book, the pronoun "he" - unless otherwise stated, is usually Cromwell himself - you are sort of viewing things from either inside his head or from behind his eyes, or while sitting on his broad shoulder.
However, by the second book, mindful of comments made by readers and reviewers (and occasional difficulties experienced by readers unfamiliar with this startlingly new format, as here the "he" is familiar - not quite as close as "I", but not as distant as a more normal literal convention would have designated "he"), Hilary Mantel had largely amended it to "he, Cromwell".
And by the third book, this stylistic device had become so well known that Mantel herself plays knowingly further with it, almost tongue in cheek, while still both denoting and reflecting Cromwell's own ascent up the greasy and slippery pole of titled eminence, so that it sometimes becomes "he, Lord Cromwell", or "he, Lord Privy Seal", or - in the penultimate section, "he, Essex", before reverting, fittingly, to "he".
