itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

i read a place of greater safety and it's great

present continuous

im goin to this

http://www.wolfhall.co.uk/imgs/generic/Wolf-Hall-Bring-Up-The-Bodies.png

I have only read the first novel but it's very good, you could even say brilliant.

The stage version would be a good thing to go to.

i'm reading the first one now, it is brilliant, i'm very happy there's a sequel.

just finished second one

why can't all books be this good srsly

i guess i am the only one in the world who got bored by Wolf Hall

off with yr head

what happened to the hbo/bbc mark rylance series that was supposed to happen?

i guess i am the only one in the world who got bored by Wolf Hall

― nostormo, Monday, March 10, 2014

i got wolf hall for my wife, who devours books and loves historical novels. she didn't get through wolf hall at all. she said it was very well-written, but too cold. i'm going to try reading it sometime soon.

i love the way mantel writes but i am maybe not 100% on her characters? i had to put wolf hall down at least temporarily b/c t crom is like way too good at everything. he is the best at scheming and politickin and he's a bad dude in general. like he's jack reacher.

i mean obv this doesn't last forever given what ultimately goes down but does it ease up in the 2nd one?

Nah.

nope

I kinda missed rafe in the second one, call-me is a poor substitue (and obv crom knows it too)

not a spoiler btw, rafe's just not in it as much

He's getting busy, I hear.

what happened to the hbo/bbc mark rylance series that was supposed to happen?

― max, Monday, March 10, 2014 11:25 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah really

its happenin

same script as the play?

play adapt: Mike Poulton

miniseries adapt: Peter Straughan

Filming will commence in Spring 2014 for transmission in 2015

thx!

twenty fifteeeeeeeeeen

that's too long ;_;

transmission

Keeping Cromwell's posse and all the people of court straight is the hardest part about these.

the court ppl i had the hardest time with, lord this & duke that

I still can't really differentiate between Norfolk and Suffolk! Folk them tbh.

totes

Like, one of them is blustery, and the other is... pious and blustery.

norfolk, thomas howard, is part of the boleyn power bloc. suffolk, charles brandon, is married to the king's sister and kind of lacking in real power because the king unhappy about it. please consult the handy vades mecum at the front of ea. volume

so i read her first novel after i'd read these -- 'every day is mother's day' -- and it's an interestingly different beast, reminds me of spark at her most merciless

one thing i saw somewhere about wolf hall: the idea that contemporary literary fiction can't admire or be impressed by its characters but has to hold them at arm's length or disdain them. i think the, like, marysueishness of thomas cromwell is a really interesting thing.

but yeah everyone in EDiMD is horrible; it fails most when it seems like it doesn't want to be even-handedly horrible but accidentally sympathises with them.

she's really good, though

but i fear that wolf hall could be extended indefinitely, so i can see why people could find it boring. well, not indefinitely (he has to die at some point), but certainly it hardly seems to have been tightly plotted (they don't get to wolf hall in the first volume) -- i sort of suspect she's winging it a bit, or was at some point. this is one of her many points of contact w george r r martin

the description of boleyn's final moments was v moving & sad

breaking up the wolf hall saga into three books seems like a decision made based on a place of greater safety, which is great but SO long, and flags in a bunch of different places, and would probably benefit from being crafted or structured as 2-3 sections that would each need to stand alone

that being said im not even sure the butb stands alone, as such

I need this to be at least 5 books.

someone put hilary on the blower, I need her to understand what I'm asking

I think three books is enough but we need to start campaigning for the next series to be about Oliver Cromwell.

I can't imagine how much work and research goes into books like these and if I were Hillary Mantel I'd want to spend the next few years drinking cocktails and writing pulp about teenage s&m vampires.

I don't think I've ever gone into historical fiction knowing less about a character and finishing the book loving the character so completely

ok that made no sense but I stand by it

hah er i bought these on someone's recommendation and left them on the shelf because i was like enh tudors. then i saw the name cromwell in connection with them and started reading them thinking man, i guess i was wrong about the tudor thing, cromwell, awesome. then i realised i was thinking of the wrong cromwell.

max do you think it was a publisher's decision, or something an agent or editor might have nudged her along the path to? it somehow feels not at all internal to the work on some level. and i sort of feel like it could have as easily been one brick as three long romps, and i feel like it would have actually been even better as three tightly plotted short novels, and i wish someone had pushed her either that way or in the direction of brick

on the other hand i feel like she deserves booker winner level publicity and money, so

thomp I did the same thing, like wow this oliver cromwell dude was way more chill than I thought

oy

I don't really know Thom!

I guess I'm partly thinking of a friend who I loaned both the Cromwell books and she finished them quickly but took forever with apogs. Which was similar to my experience. Could very easily just be that apogs is not as good or at least less engaging

well the difference is cromwell. there is no one individual to ride in apogs, nothing like the character she built with cromwell and the way she uses that perspective, which are definitely what pushes those books to another level. but it is still a great book with a lot of the same basic qualities. i don't know how important familiarity with the context is, i feel like everyone kind of knows the henry 8 stuff even if not crom himself? anyway, i wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to someone who enjoyed these books.

if these are better than apogs (of which I have ~350pp left) I canny wait to read em and hope to do so before seeing the plays in june

I'm around half way through APOGS and although it is a good book, Wolf Hall and Bring up the bodies are superior books. APOGS suffers a little from the canvas being just too large, she even apologises at the start of the book for exorcising Dr Marat from the proceedings. Stylistically Mantel has developed a much more sparse style for the Cromwell books, she can cover much more plot in much less text and the sparse style make the key moments stand out all the more poignantly.

I think APOGS has to many individuals, Cromwell provides a dramatic locus that has to be spread over Camille, Danton and Robespierre. The Cromwell books also seem to be much more about families, all of the main characters are grounded in their family units, The royal household, the cromwell household, the seymours, the even outsiders like Chapuis seem to get added and viewed as part of the Cromwell family. Catherine's pain seems to be rooted in her exile from any kind of family. APOGS doesn't have this lens to see things through and is more complex as a result.

Still a great read.

see plenty of householdism in apogs though there isn't a lot of dwelling and within a v large canvas agree

also never hear from marat but he is recurringly present

was gonna say, there are a lot of households in apogs!

I was steeling myself to not really enjoy APOGS as much, and worried that I was reading it to soon after Bring up the Bodies

but I'm enjoying it!

It def does suffer from having such a massive cast of characters, I occasionally get kinda swimmy with the details 'what? who? huh? oh who cares just keep reading' but her ability to make these distant historical figures so human and, idk, alive, is really something

sometimes I wish we didn't have to whisk away from characters so quickly, I'm always looking back over my shoulder as we move onto the next thing like aw man I was just starting to dig those dudes do we have to leave

apogs were great

fun finally reading all the wiki articles for people I knew nothing about before and was avoiding so as not to spoilerise myself

yeah it's like, holy crap EVERY character is a real person

Is the creepy harp player who hangs out with the women folk and cromwell has a hate-on for a real guy?