Historical Fiction (Released October, 2009)
Bottom Line: Skip it.
Link to this book on Amazon

Plot Summary:
Set in 1500′s England, Wolf Hall is a fictional account of the events surrounding Henry VIII’s efforts to ditch his wife, Katherine of Aragon, for Anne Boleyn told from Thomas Cromwell’s perspective.

My Thoughts:
I loved The Other Boleyn Girl and was excited to read Wolf Hall, which covers the same events from a different perspective (Thomas Cromwell’s vs. Mary Boleyn’s).  However, Hilary Mantel is no Philippa Gregory.  

Wolf Hall is a storytelling mess!  There are far too many characters (there is a guide in the front of the book version, but flipping back and forth is annoying), transitions between present day and past memories are choppy, and the dialogue is hard to follow.  

I have to be honest here and say that I did not finish this book – and I rarely fail to finish a book! I felt like I put enough time into it (got over halfway through) to write a review, but really didn’t feel like slogging through the remaining 300 pages. This is the only book in the past two years that I haven’t finished. Yes, it was that bad…

I have recently started calling painful books that won a lot of literary awards “Award Losers” and Wolf Hall absolutely falls into this category (it won the Mann Booker Prize in 2009), along with The Orphan Master’s Son and The Round House.