Margaret H. (ExPeruanista) - , reviewed on 10/26/2014 + 68 more book reviews

I found Hilary Mantel's recent book of modern short stories (The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher) so annoying and pointless that I almost didn't start reading Wolf Hall, which would have meant I missed a treat. I like this one so well that I can hardly wait to get my hands on the second one, Bring Up the Bodies, and the yet-unpublished third volume. Yes, the narrative style, sort of told in the first person, but using the third person pronoun for whenever Cromwell himself speaks, is a bit tiresome, what with sorting out whether the 'he' who is speaking is Cromwell or whoever he was with in the preceding paragraph. After I'd become used to this, I had difficulty putting the book down, just because Cromwell is such a fascinating character, at least as he's shown here, and the suspense about what cynical, commonsensical thing he'll think or say next is quite irresistible.

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