Wolf Hall

Thanks to the incredible staff at Skylight Books I was able to obtain a copy of Wolf Hall a couple weeks ago (hard to get at the time since it had just won the Booker Prize). The tale of Henry VIII's pursuit of Anne Boleyn come hell or high water drives the plot, but it's the ambition and inventiveness of Hilary Mantel's narrator Thomas Cromwell that make the story so compelling. She portrays him as surprisingly enlightened and, for all his power, equally beloved and feared. While I was reading I found myself picturing Jeremy Northam as Cromwell--He actually plays Cromwell's nemesis Sir Thomas More to James Frain's Cromwell in Showtime's The Tudors. --Kim