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HarperCollins
650 pages
Rs399
Be warned. This year's Man Booker winner is a thinly disguised history lesson. But when truth is stranger than fiction, history can be a juicy read. A more conventional choice for a literary award than a snippet of life at court in Tudor England would be hard to find. But the Booker has always been a hard horse race to predict. It settled on Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall this year, thus choosing a postmodern period novel that takes very seriously the absurd circumstances arising out of King Henry VIII's infamous rule.
Mantel is no stranger to historical fiction, but she surpasses herself with the portrayal of Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540) -- the first earl of Essex and chief minister of King Henry VIII from 1532-1540. She brings him alive, a man who may be second in importance to Henry VIII's kingdom, but is fiercely central to her novel. Cromwell becomes the eye of the maelstrom as England changes from a mere kingdom of the middle ages to become an empire in its own right.
A lesser writer might be impeded by the fact that the reader may be aware of the events she portrays. But Mantel's pacing is immaculate, retaining all the freshness of a thriller. Henry VIII was a notoriously fickle king, who to slake his lust for the dark-eyed Anne Boleyn sought to divorce his wife of 20 years, on the grounds that she was widow to his brother. In what is surely the messiest divorce in history, the king went on to separate from Rome, establishing the Church of England to achieve this. All this was possible only under the guidance of Thomas Cromwell, who established Henry's preeminence through intricate parliamentary laws.
Mantel makes the Middle Ages seem modern. As perhaps they were, in that the struggle of a capricious king became the struggle of a nation to become sovereign. Cromwell himself seems a modern man in a superstitious age, "it is not the stars that make us...it is circumstances... the choices we make under pressure; our virtues make us, but virtues are not enough, we must deploy our vices at times." He seems the epitome of upward mobility. The book opens with a sympathetic portrayal of the boy Cromwell under the boot of his blacksmith father. It ends with him at the top of political power, being visited at home by the king.
Mantel brings the age alive in its bloody splendour -- we learn of how a man may be slashed open and have his insides devoured by dogs, while still breathing; of how a heretic woman at the stake may be lifted out of flames via a machine so that the teeming crowds may better enjoy the spectacle of agony.
What steals the show however is Cromwell. He is an often-reviled character in history, for his manipulations. But he appears in Wolf Hall as ruthless only in his efficiency at pleasing his monarch. In Mantel's telling he is a compassionate figure in a savage age. Wolf Hall ends with Cromwell at the height of his political advantage. History ends with Cromwell's boiled head on a spear facing away from London. Mantel's silence on this is cleverly poignant.
