I’m just over a third of the way through reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. It’s a work of historical fiction (which for a time some years ago was all I read) that tells the story of the life of Thomas Cromwell who rose from a low class birth to be Chief Minister to the King of England. In the early 1530′s he oversaw massive change in England’s political and social development including paving the way for Henry VIII to divorce his first wife and marry Ann Boleyn. Generally history does not look kindly upon Cromwell, for example in the play A Man for All Seasons he is depicted as unprincipled and almost evil in comparison to Thomas More, and Mantel has taken pains to create a more sympathetic picture of the man in Wolf Hall.

I was quite keen to read the book as it is a period in history that I find quite interesting, there has been much buzz about it (including winning the Man Booker Prize last year) and I enjoyed the only other of Mantel’s books that I’ve read (Eight Months on Ghazzah Street which isn’t historical fiction). I’ve even got the book in two formats: a giant hardcover (650 pages) which I received as a gift and a long audio book (nearly 24 hours) which I bought.

Normally I think about my current books when I’m not physically reading. Not in an obsessive way but in a ‘thoughts wander across my mind’ kind of way. I look forward to the reading time in my day when I can get back to the book and find out what’s happening. That is not the case with Wolf Hall. The further I get into the book the less interested I am in reading on.

I’m not entirely sure why this is. Partly it’s the need to pay very close attention to Mantel’s pronouns otherwise you have no clue who she’s talking about. Partly it’s the abundance of irrelevant detail. And partly it’s the simple fact that she hasn’t, for me, created a reason to read on. With fictionalised history like this, where you know the broad facts, there has to be something else to keep you interested and the characterisation of Cromwell isn’t enough to keep me going. I enjoyed hearing about his early life and his family and his mentoring under Cardinal Wolsey but now it seems to be morphing into a book of facts and dates and I don’t care too much about that kind of thing.

Do books call to you when you’re not reading them? Do you read on if your interest in the book suddenly disappears?