{"id":20268,"date":"2014-10-02T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/litstack.com\/?p=20268"},"modified":"2023-12-30T08:53:25","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T16:53:25","slug":"20268","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/20268\/","title":{"rendered":"LitStack Recs: Wolf Hall and The Book of Lost Things"},"content":{"rendered":"
Wolf Hall\"wolf<\/a><\/em>
\nHilary Mantel<\/h5>\n

This recommendation is of a book I’ve not yet finished, or for that matter, even read\u2014well technically. I’m currently listening to the audiobook version of Hilary Mantel’s multi-award winning novel Wolf Hall<\/em>. I plucked it from the library shelf yesterday afternoon, and in twenty four hours, it’s been the cause of all the work that’s fallen behind. The novel, which appeared in 2012 and has gone on to be a global best seller, has won numerous awards\u00a0 including the Man Booker Prize and The National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Wolf Hall<\/em> is first in a trilogy on Thomas Cromwell and his rapid rise to power during the Tudor dynasty. The second, Bring Up The Bodies<\/em> was recently released, and the third,\u00a0The Mirror and the Light,<\/em> is forthcoming.<\/p>\n

Wolf Hall<\/em> has been described as a fictionalized biography, and is set within a specific period of Cromwell’s life, from 1500 to 1535. Cromwell rose from a working class background to become an indispensable confidante and guide to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, adviser to King Henry XVIII, and went on to be one of Henry’s most powerful ministers\u2014almost single-handedly ushering in the Protestant reformation. Mantel’s portrayal has been called<\/a> an “intimate and well-rounded portrait of Cromwell as a pragmatic and talented man attempting to serve king and country amid the political machinations of Henry’s court.”<\/p>\n

Truthfully, I haven’t read much historical fiction. I tend to be disappointed at the breaches that so often seem to occur\u2014wincing at period oversights in references to food or other terminology that break the authenticity of voice. With such small details I should be more forgiving, since history was never my strong suit. But if there is one thing I’ve come to be a stickler about, it’s the precision of written text\u2014in historical fiction or otherwise\u2014and line for line, I don’t think you’ll find a writer more precise, and for that matter, more rich and imaginative than Mantel. Here is Stephen Greenblatt on Wolf Hall in The New York Review of Books.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the most fully realized historical novels, the historical figures are not merely background material or incidental presences but the dominant characters, thoroughly reimagined and animated. They are at the center of our attention, and their actions in the world seem to carry the burden of a vast, unfolding historical process that is most fully realized in small, contingent, local gestures. Those gestures are ordinarily hidden from official chroniclers, but they are the special purview of the historical novelist. \u201cForget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions,\u201d Mantel writes in a kind of credo:<\/p>\n

This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman\u2019s sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve come late to Mantel’s work. She has been publishing novels, short stories, as well as a memoir, since 1985. Though it was not until she embarked on her historical novels that her work became widely known. Mantel’s writing process, based on years of research (Wolf Hall<\/em> reportedly required five), and meticulous charting of characters and events, has produced what might be called a dream formula\u2014not one for success, though it has certainly brought that\u2014but for the framework that enables her to construct a stunning and often virtuoso blend of voice and point of view. Here is Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the supercilious and manipulative adviser to Henry XVIII, after he’s been ousted from his exalted position\u2014and his luxury apartment in London\u2014for his interference in the King’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn:<\/p>\n

Wolsey sits with his elbows on his desk, his fingers dabbing his closed lids. He takes a great breath, and begins to talk: he begins to talk about England. You can\u2019t know Albion, he says, unless you can go back before Albion was thought of. You must go back before Caesar\u2019s legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground where one day London would be built. You must go back to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers; beside which, he says, the match with Anne looks less unusual. These are old stories, he says, but some people, let us remember, do believe them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The point of view of each character has a complexity and has breadth that renders their conversations, thoughts, dreams and histories thrilling to read. Mantel turns even the act of rolling up a carpet into a surreal and stirring flight.<\/p>\n

But caveat emptor<\/em>, I suppose, since I’m only on the second disk of eighteen. Though for what it’s worth, at this rate, I’ll likely have finished the audiobook in a day or two. And from there, I’m heading straight to the bookshelf to begin the trilogy’s second installment.<\/p>\n

\u2014Lauren Alwan<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Book of Lost Things\"rec\"<\/a>
\n<\/em>\u00a0John Connolly<\/h5>\n

Since it’s October, I thought I would concentrate on recommendations with a creepy edge to them, and there is no better place to start than with John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Book of Lost Things<\/em>\u00a0has a pretty simple premise:\u00a0 a young boy loses his mother, and due to that and other stresses in his life, starts to imagine strangenesses such as books that murmur and whisper to him, and dreams of a shadowy figure that he calls The Crooked Man.\u00a0 Then one fateful day he is thrown into another world, where his boyhood stories come to life, with terrible implications.<\/p>\n

But this is no quaint, modernized fairy tale or child\u2019s updated fable.\u00a0 The world that young David finds himself may be populated with familiar characters, but their actions are often horrifying and all too real in their consequences.\u00a0 There are woodsmen and wolves, and wolves that would be men, white knights with deep secrets, sorcery, even Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (one of the more comical sections of the book) \u2013 but none of them are what we would expect, unless we took the original Brothers Grimm at face value.\u00a0 The Crooked Man turns out to not only be real, but a sinister catalyst in this realized land of make believe.<\/p>\n

But even more exists \u2013 not only are David\u2019s stories manifest here, but so are his fears.\u00a0 As he travels towards the city that houses the fading King, who rules the land and may hold the key for David\u2019s return to his own world with his Book of Lost Things, he must make decisions that no child should have to make.<\/p>\n

This is definitely NOT a children\u2019s tale, but it’s simple prose and tacit acceptance of the fantastical things that are occurring do evoke a childlike wonder and keeps the reader indelibly rooted in a world where disbelief is easily suspended.\u00a0 Connolly has a gift for being able to write about fantastic things without a hint of artifice or a lot of self-examination (something we adults are prone to do constantly), yet he doesn\u2019t \u201cdumb down\u201d David, either.\u00a0 The descriptions he gives us are just enough to allow us to build vivid images in our own imagination, which is highly appropriate, given the parameters of this fantastical world (this comment will make more sense once you\u2019ve read the book).\u00a0 This lack of complication allows the story to stay on center stage.<\/p>\n

The Book of Lost Things<\/em>\u00a0will creep you out and stay with you for a long time, but it will not leave a bad taste in your mouth and it will cause you to pay more attention to those shadowy things that you see for just a second out of the corner of your eye.<\/p>\n

\u2014Sharon Browning<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel This recommendation is of a book I’ve not yet finished, or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20269,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[719],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[9350],"class_list":["post-20268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-litstack-series"],"authors":[{"term_id":9350,"user_id":3,"is_guest":0,"slug":"tstate","display_name":"Tee Tate","avatar_url":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/cd9f89f6b095efe70391e37be4f8226c.jpg?ver=1777325269","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20268"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.litstack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=20268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}