When I admitted in a prior blog post that I felt a teeny-bit let down at the end of Wolf Hall because of the novel's dialogue, I was not telling - I must confess - the whole story. In fact, the plotting also didn't satisfy, but I wanted to address that issue in a separate post because my plot-wise complaints are not directed at Hilary Mantel.
They are directed at history.
History - like individual lives - doesn't unfold in a neat, plot-ready chunks that move from initial provocation, to thickening, to climax, to smug resolution. While the role of the historical novelist is to shape history, so that the reader can partake in some semblance of the traditional joys of a plotted tale, history (and I feel confident that no one has made this observation before) isn't silly putty: you can't stretch it around however you like. If the escapades of Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII don't fit neatly into the traditional three act structure of Western plots, then your historical novel isn't going to have a traditional three act plot.
Hilary Mantel surely excelled herself with her plotting of material. Stephen Greenblatt, writing in The New York Review of Books, points out that the events she covers, including her choice of ending Wolf Hall in the wake of Thomas More's execution, track Shakespeare's treatment of the same topic. Mantel has probably received shabbier compliments.
But to my taste - and I admit, I harbor a bias in favor of strong plotting - Wolf Hall's plot didn't build enough momentum to carry me through the 650 pages.
One problem was that it was weighed down by numerous sub-plots that will presumably be fleshed out in Mantel's upcoming sequel - chief among them being the fates of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had a secret wife and daughter.
Another drawback was that Wolf Hall was weighed down by numerous sub-plots that were resolved within the text, but didn't seem to advance the overall plot. The in-depth treatment of the Holy Maid, for example, eats up twenty pages, but what do we get? Additional insight into the character of Thomas Cromwell; a foretaste of the trial awaiting Thomas More; an inkling of what the Inquisition in England looked like; a sense of the insecurity Henry VIII felt about his legitimacy; but how do any of these points advance the plot? Four hundred and eighty-four pages into the book, I was expecting the plot to be tightening, not loosening its belt and expanding.
But perhaps my expectations are unwarranted. My guess is that Hilary Mantel covered the Holy Maid episode because it happened. Because it's history. And history (to say nothing of Mantel) doesn't give a damn about my plot expectations.
Reading Wolf Hall gave me a new appreciation for the challenges of writing a historical novel, as well as the realization that I am not - contrary to past (unintended) mis-statements - currently writing a historical novel. The Celebration Husband, my soon-to-be-completed-in-draft-form fourth novel, which is set in East Africa during WWI, is a novel that takes place in the past; it's not a historical novel. The events described didn't actually happen.
For the record, the events described in The Celebration Husband conform to a traditional Western plot. I (not surprisingly) do give a damn about my plot expectations, and the actual historical facts were too scattershot to stick with. This is why I'm a fiction author: I like silly putty.
(Image of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn from The Mirror)
When I admitted in a prior blog post that I felt a teeny-bit let down at the end of Wolf Hall because of the novel's dialogue, I was not telling - I must confess - the whole story. In fact, the plotting also didn't satisfy, but I wanted to address that issue in a separate post because my plot-wise complaints are not directed at Hilary Mantel.
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