Book Review #36 - Wolf Hall

I think I needed a good semester in English History to really enjoy this book. Hilary Mantel, who clearly knows her Henry VIIIth stuff, does not dumb down her vast field of knowledge so that someone like me, whose handle of this tumultuous time in both religious freedom, women's rights and the UKs monarchy is limited to once reading The Other Boleyn Girl, a Phillipa Gregory novel, and all the words to the "I'm Henry the eighth I am!" song doesn't have to do a head scratch or two. First of all, it seems like everyone is named Thomas. The pronouns alone and my confusion about who "he" was at any given point in the novel was enough to prevent me from loving the book. By the end, I could see that this was a big deal. It's the kind of book that makes a period of history feel very real and not so long, long ago. If only those pronouns hadn't tripped me up so much, I could have loved this one.