Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has won the Man Booker Prize, and as a bonus was chosen by Amazon as one of their Best Books of the Month of October. The book will be out in the US next week. Reserves will be building on this one I think.
The book is a 650-page “extraordinary piece of storytelling” according to the London Times. Predictions are that it will outsell all previous Booker Prize winners.
The oddsmakers got this year’s pick right, though they’re usually wrong, says the Christian Science Monitor, which also goes on to say that “Mantel has led a varied life, both professionally and personally. Born in England, she has lived in both Botswana and Saudi Arabia.”
Janet Maslin of The New York Times reviewed the book this week, and seems to be looking forward to the sequel, which Ms. Mantel is currently working on.
This book gives a look at Henry VIII’s court from an unusual point of view—not from Henry, not Anne Boleyn, not Thomas More, but Thomas Cromwell, the “powerful fixer” who enabled Henry to repudiate the Catholic church and marry Anne.
This one promises to be huge.
