Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel [DNF]
I've been in a massive reading slump for the past few months. It's not just been reading, I've been in a slump in general for most of this year. I think a combination of changing jobs and wedding planned has overwhelmed me and I've been unable to focus on anything.
That slump seemed to come to an end last week. I read a couple of books that I really enjoyed (though I haven't reviewed them), and decided to pick up a book I've been meaning to read for years - Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.
Unfortunately this is a DNF for me, at somewhere around the 30% mark. I pushed on beyond the point where I first started to think that maybe I wasn't enjoying it, because at times I was really loving it. That's mostly down to the quality of Mantel's prose, which is exquisite and a joy to read.
If good prose were enough to sustain a book then I'd love this, but it isn't. Most of my time spent reading this I spent adrift, with no idea what was happening, who these people were, or what the significance of anything was. It quickly became clear to me that I don't know enough about Tudor history to make any sense of this.
I pressed on, but I eventually realised that was well as not knowing what was happening I didn't really know who it was happening to. Thomas Cromwell, obviously, but who actually is he? We spend all of our time in his head, but I had no sense of who he is, what he wants, what drives him. He moves through the world and things happen around him, and he comments on them. Once I realised that I didn't know anything about the narrator and didn't seem to be learning anything about him, either, I decided to give it up and move on to other things.
I've intended to read all of the Booker Prize winners at some point (as well as all of the International Booker winners). After DNFing this I suppose I now know that I also won't be reading the sequel, which won the prize in 2012. So that's one challenge that just got a little more attainable.