Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I'm normally not big on historical fiction, but I was surprised to be immediately (or almost immediately) hooked by this. Hilary Mantel must have a time machine, I have no other theories as to how she so perfectly depicts the Tudor court. I'm very interested in studying material culture, and Mantel sensitively captures the importance of clothes, of objects, of painting, of things in this novel. Emblems on coats of arms, ceremonial rings and garments, books handed from person to person take on a life of their own and are as active and vivid as the characters. I would never have believed it, since in historical accounts I have always found Thomas Cromwell utterly repulsive, but a few pages into the book, and I was completely in love with him. The way Mantel creates and captures characters is compelling in a very modern way, but at the same time perfectly situated in the historical moment. She wonderfully makes use of Renaissance imagery and way of seeing the world. In one part, Cromwell is looking through his deceased wife's book of hours and starts weeping, and another of Cardinal Woolsey's men comes up and talks to him in an extraordinarily historically sensitive scene. The Renaissance did not have the modern stigma associated with men crying (or at least not to our current extent), and Cromwell doesn't try to deny or hide his emotions. Yet somehow the scene is perfectly understandable to a modern reader. It's a very contemporary book in that it has the sort of characters that are currently popular. Thomas Cromwell's character strongly reminds me of Peaky Blinders' Thomas Shelby; efficient, ruthless, loyal, tormented, cold and passionate at the same time. I'm also surprised at this book's popularity, because it requires quite extensive historical knowledge (either I am very ignorant or this book requires far more than knowledge than a causal reader would have). I'm familiar with a good bit of Tudor history, and still had to look up quite a lot of things. I heard somewhere that most people don't even know that William Tyndale was the first person to translate the Bible into English, and Mantel doesn't pause to explain who people like Tyndale are. So while I'm extremely impressed by Mantel's degree of knowledge and writing, I'm a little puzzled by the book's popularity. I'll definitely be back for Bring Up the Bodies (and probably the upcoming third book as well), but maybe not just yet, I need a break.