Colin Falconer Guest Review of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Please welcome back author Colin Falconer to Historical Fiction Connection.  He is the author of the upcoming novel Silk Road.

REVIEW OF WOLF HALL by HILARY MANTEL

COLIN FALCONER

It’s rare these days to find an historical novelist who hasn’t written about the Tudors. The story of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I is rich with intrigue, heaving bosoms, treachery, huge codpieces, starched ruffs, and pale, ambitious, doomed women. Desperate Housewives meets the Rack. You would think that with the number of words - and furlongs of celluloid - dedicated to their story, even just over the last two decades, that the harvest was in, the cellar empty, the bottle dry.

So it was with no little reserve that I approached Hilary Mantels’ WOLF HALL. What else was there to say about the Tudors? Well, quite a lot, apparently.

The novel’s back drop is a defining moment in British history, when Henry wrested power away from the Catholic Church and allowed Britain to worship - and think – for itself. But Bluff King Hal was not motivated by great religious purpose; he was simply in love with a younger woman and wanted a son and heir. He was, as Mantel paints him, a man terrified for his immortal soul but not so concerned that he was going to let anyone – even God - stand in his way.

WOLF HALL follows the contest between Henry and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon; between the Pope and the King; between Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. But this isn’t the story; this is just the plot. The world to which we are allowed entry is not that of Henry VIII, or the Boleyns, but the much maligned Thomas Cromwell.

We follow his rise from a Putney blacksmith’s son to the second most powerful man in England and if that was all the narrative, it would have made an adequate Jeffrey Archer novel. In Mantel’s hands it becomes something else.

I was prepared for a long and tedious beginning. After all, didn’t this win the Man Booker Prize in 2009? The cast list of the characters at the beginning reads like the telephone listing of a small town. When I picked it up, my heart sank.

I expected the opening paragraph to be a long description of a vase. Instead, on the first page, we meet Thomas Cromwell as a teenager, being kicked unconscious on the cobblestones by his father. Hard not to cheer for him; stay down, son, stay down. If you try and get up again, the next boot will kill you.

His married sister dresses his injuries and he escapes on a boat to France. The next time we encounter him he is chief counsel to the king’s chief counsellor, Cardinal Wolsey. It's a long way from the mud and blood of the Putney yard, but Cromwell isn’t done yet. He is the ultimate fixer, the man who gets things done. “He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury." He also knows the New Testament by heart. While Wolsey and More crumble under the press of the king’s tantrums and whimsies, Cromwell endures and prevails. When Cromwell falls gets sick the king pays a personal visit to his home to see him well again. Even his bitterest enemies come to rely on him.

Much of Cromwell's history is told in quicksilver flashbacks. They beg more questions than they answer and add to his allure, allowing the reader to recreate the man in their own mind. We expect a monster with a heart like an abacus; instead Mantel shows us an enforcer who champions tolerance, a free-thinker who still ensures that the king has his way. His affection for his family, his ward - even his enemies - disarms. In finding charity in one of history’s villains, she has found the unseen aspect of Henry’s story and rendered it utterly fresh.

In fact she relegates the king and all those wives as well as the religious future of England to an afterword; it’s Cromwell’s fate that captivates. We never do go to Wolf Hall though we sense that is where his fortunes will finally turn.

This is a beautiful and surprisingly tender book. The assumption is that there will be a sequel but I hope she will leave this work to stand alone. We all know that Cromwell came to a nasty end and this lends poignancy to the book’s enigmatic ending.

This is not so much a novel as a portrait, the artist capturing a great man in his moment of pre-eminent glory just before tragedy overtakes him. “Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon, says Thomas More, and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.” It is the sense of doom unforeseen that lends brilliance to the artist’s precise brushwork.

If you are looking for a bodice ripper or a Ken Follett saga, this is not for you. Mantel’s overuse of the personal pronoun may also drive you to distraction. Who said what? But this time the Booker judges got it exactly right. Cromwell may well charm you in the same way he seduced Henry’s court. When the book ends it is like saying goodbye to an old friend.

Colin Falconer's When We Were Gods - the story of Cleopatra, has just been re-released on Kindle for $5.99. His new novel Silk Road, will be published by Corvus Atlantic on October 1. To find out more, see http://www.colinfalconer.net  and his blog: http://www.colinfalconer.net/the-man-with-the-past.html

Guest Post: Colin Falconer, author of the upcoming novel Silk Road

Please welcome author Colin Falconer to Historical Fiction Connection. He is the author of the upcoming novel Silk Road.

CLEOPATRA: A MIRROR TO THE PRESENT

Colin Falconer

Cleopatra has been an object of fascination for writers, artists and film directors down the centuries.

But in her book, ‘Cleopatra, Queen Lover Legend’ Lucy Hughes-Hallet contends that every story written about her, and every picture painted of her, said more about the artist and the times they lived in than they did about the woman herself.

Cleopatra has been variously portrayed as virtuous suicide, inefficient housewife, exuberant lover, professional courtesan, scheming manipulator, and femme fatale. Was she Shakespeare’s cruel and lazy siren, Shaw’s man-eater or Taylor’s alluring beauty? Or does she rather, as Hughes suggests, only represent those aspects of the female that has most challenged each era since her death?

Cleopatra’s fiction was first formulated in her own lifetime by her enemies' propaganda. Its primary purpose was to discredit her lover Mark Antony. Antony’s rival, Augustus, claimed he had become so besotted with the Queen of Egypt that she had virtually emasculated him. He profited by denigrating Antony to his fellow Romans as a hedonist and a traitor, for in Rome - unlike in Egypt - women were considered inferior, lacking in virtue and intelligence.

And so Cleopatra became the dangerous feminine that can lure a helpless man from his duty to pursue the forbidden; and over the next two millennia she came to be the mirror in which each age saw its women.

In the fourteenth century, for example, Chaucer painted her as the very paragon of feminine virtue; the proof of her goodness being that she didn't wish to outlive her man. In an age when love-matches were rare and widowhood the only condition in which a woman could be truly independent, her great virtue, it seemed, was that she didn’t want to live longer than Anthony did.

But by the time of the Renaissance, with art and society dominated by themes of the sacred and the profane, Cleopatra’s bare breasts and the phallic asp became a dominant motif for many artists. The significance of her ritual suicide was overwhelmed by the imagined manner of it.
Later, as the American and French revolutions gripped eighteenth century Europe and North America, her story evolved into the clash between rival systems of government. Cleopatra and Antony represented the feudal nobility opposed to Octavius's centralising and modernising regime.

By colonial times she had transformed yet again, was depicted in gauzy harem pants and sparkly bra, like a dusky Lady Gaga, lolling indolently on a divan, representing a terminally decadent culture ripe for annexation by a benignly virgin western power.

In the Victorian era Cleopatra was reborn yet again as femme fatale, flouter of every convention, breacher of every taboo. To an increasingly rigid and regulated society, she was at once both evil and delightful, a powerful antidote to male sexual guilt.

The image persisted into 1930’s Hollywood. Cecil B de Mille offered the leading role in his movie about her to Claudette Colbert with the words: "How would you like to play the wickedest woman in history?" By this time "wicked" had become a term of approbation - sexy, edgy, titillating. The wickedest woman in history? The real Cleopatra was politically astute, a genius at diplomacy and an brilliant administrator – but how can that ever stack up against a sparkly bra?

By the time of the notorious 1963 movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton the tragedy of her reign had devolved to history's best-ever holiday romance.

Hughes has made a very good point; Cleopatra is not as much a woman as an idea. Historians know what she did and what happened to her, but the interpretation of her history depends largely on the writer or artist and the times they live in.

But what was she really like?

Perhaps only Liz Taylor will ever know.

Colin Falconer's When We Were Gods - the story of Cleopatra, has just been re-released on Kindle for $5.99. His new novel Silk Road, will be published by Corvus Atlantic on October 1. To find out more, see http://www.colinfalconer.net  and his blog: http://www.colinfalconer.net/the-man-with-the-past.html

The RAVEN and the WOLF: Chronicle II - Land of Ire By Christopher Spellman

The RAVEN and the WOLF: Chronicle II - Land of Ire By Christopher Spellman
ISBN-13: 9781614342555
Publisher: Booklocker.com
Date: May 2011
Page Count: 306




Available at
http://booklocker.com/books/5477.html
http://www.amazon.com/RAVEN-WOLF-Chronicle-Land-Ire/dp/1614342555/
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-raven-the-wolf-christopher-spellman/1031308549

There is currently a giveaway contest for June. Two winners will receive a free copy of Land of Ire. Details on my blog: http://christopher-spellman.tumblr.com/


Chris Spellman
Author of The Raven & the Wolf Series
Blood Oath: http://booklocker.com/books/4631.html
Land of Ire: http://booklocker.com/books/5477.html

The sequel to The Raven  the Wolf trilogy's 2010 debut novel Blood Oath, Land of Ire continues the dramatic saga of two Anglo-Danish brothers on the isle of Britain embroiled in a bitter, dark age blood feud.


Synopsis:
940 AD. Having departed alive and triumphant from the blood-washed fields of England's greatest battle, Wulfric, the ill-starred brother and rival of a Viking Jarl, makes way homeward in hopes of finding the peace of a simple life. But his fate-threads are intricately and sinisterly woven toward a less forgiving destiny.

The Norse King of Ireland, though vanquished, has yet to abandon his aspirations to the throne of Jórvík, the seat of power in Northumbria. The walls of the old city surrounded and the shadow of misfortune falling, Wulfric must rally his brotherhood of warriors in hopes of safeguarding their homes and families.

In this second and equally foreboding tale of The Raven & the Wolf, the sworn brethren forged by Wulfric must follow a noble calling, journeying toward an unfriendly land across a sea that is both lonely and rife with menace. But what lies in between is a path sown with peril, injustice and a menagerie of wayward foes and unlikely allies.

The gods are restless and the seas reddening with the blood of the damned. Just who will survive the upheaval the Norns are left to decide.


See Christopher Spellman's previous visit to HF-Connection here.

{Giveaway!} Guest Post by author Debra Brown, A Passion for the Victorian period

Please join me in welcoming to our blog today...author, Debra Brown.  

Greetings! I have enjoyed a life of reading and various kinds of creative pursuits. Although I read many Nancy Drew books as a child and especially enjoyed Charles Dickens in my school years, I didn’t really have much time for reading in my earlier adult life. Therefore, I did not find my niche, or at least realize
it, until the last decade. I now realize that the things I remember from Nancy Drew revolve around old Victorian houses! Period. And that is the sort of thing that stands out to me in anything I’ve read in the past. For the last decade and a half I had a jewelry business that was doing well, but the creative part of it was the first few years. After that, I was filling orders for repeats of the same items. It was not creative and not fulfilling. It was boring. I began to put on movies, and before long I began to order only period movies. I had fallen in love with the genre decades ago, but only realized it more recently. As the economy began to take down my jewelry business and I began to run out of new period movies to watch, I decided to, just for fun, write my own Victorian story. I had no intention of publishing it at the time. I obtained books from the library and began researching the period and enjoying pictures of the British landscape. It was then as if the book mushroomed into being in my mind. I could not get it down on paper as fast as it grew, and it was nearly impossible to sleep at night for needing to write! I fell in love with writing, and it is what I will be doing for the rest of my life. I hope others can enjoy my work as much as I do.

My book, The Companion of Lady Holmeshire, will be published this spring. Please watch for it! My book site and a Reader’s Game are at http://t.co/MmYrIEh. I will give away a download copy of the book here, via the Historical Fiction Connection. I thank Michelle for the privilege of posting here. And now for the story!


A foundling infant, early in Queen Victoria's reign, grown to become the lovely servant girl, Miss Emma Carrington, has been chosen by the Countess of Holmeshire as her companion to keep her from the lonely hours of widowhood. Emma returns from London, where she had been receiving training in the arts of refinement, to the country castle home of the Lady in Northumbria. There she receives a warm welcome from her former workmates downstairs. The Countess intends to introduce this former servant girl into aristocratic society, alongside herself, despite much anxiety over it on the part of the former housemaid. Soon the Lady’s son, the 7th Earl of Holmeshire, who is engaged to an aristocratic London lady, returns from his travels to the Continent. How does he take to the presence of this former servant girl at tea? A day in the village below reveals some hint of danger to Emma; what is the source of that threat? Follow the enjoyable (nonerotic) romantic developments and enjoy life with both the aristocrats and the servants. Join them as they travel into London for The Season, and learn how Emma is received, or not, in snobbish upper class society. See some of the harsh realities of life while visiting a poor area in Victorian London. Attend a ball along with the young Queen Victoria. Follow the backstory into the Regency era. Last, but not least, quite some intriguing mystery has been woven through the book: an expensive bracelet has been stolen, and the identities and behaviors of several people are puzzling. See what you can deduce before reading the last two chapters! Please leave your guesses on my Reader's Game page. And then watch for the great surprise ending!

If you would like to win this download copy of Debra's book, please comment below with your email address and tell us what is your favorite aspect of the Victorian period in history.


--Get an extra entry for each tweet, facebook that you link this post to!
--And get an Extra 3 entries for posting on your blog with the graphic above, linking to this post.
--Be sure to leave those links in the comments.  You may put everything in ONE comment.
--Since this is a download copy, the giveaway is open worldwide and will end on Tues, 5/31 at 11:59 pm CT

Thanks for stopping by and for entering! And thanks again to Debra for being our guest today!

21 Aldgate by Patricia Friedberg

Introducing 21 ALDGATE by Patricia Friedberg:

21 ALDGATE set in pre-WWII London’s Jewish East End and fashionable Chelsea, is a story of the relationship between the artist, Paul Maze and its lasting effect upon the life of his young married assistant, Clara, during and after the writing of his memoir of the Great War, Frenchman in Khaki, Heinemann, London 1934.

It is a story of love and war that bears witness to the prejudice, bias, aggression and propaganda that influenced British society during the buildup to WWII; contrasting the political climate of Mosley’s fascists, the brutal attacks and police protected march through the Jewish East End culminating in the infamous Cable Street Riot - to the charade of the Upper class societies denial of the impending Nazi threat.


21 Aldgate is an address in the East End of London. It is home a working class Jewish family, the Levys, and in particular their married daughter Clara and her husband Sidney.

A few miles away in Chelsea is 14 Cheyne Walk, home to the wealthy, successful and charismatic Paul Maze. The distance only a few miles, yet in 1930’s England it was a social divide virtually impossible to imagine, let alone cross. And so begins a journey for Clara, every day a few miles on the bus, every day a little further from Aldgate and her family and the husband she loves.

Clara is introduced to the society Maze moves in, the privilege he enjoys and despite the prejudice she encounters, a passion grows between she and Maze.

We learn of Maze friendship and support of Churchill during the period that has come to be known as the Appeasement. Clara travels with Maze, first to France and later on a dangerous undercover mission to Germany where she witnesses first-hand the Nazis thwart upon the Jews. Even as she ventures further from 21 Aldgate, attacks on her East End community by Mosley’s fascists and her strong family ties cause her equal consternation.

Maze largesse, regardless of his elitist place in society, undertakes dangerous war assignments during WWII, engages Clara in the recording the placement of mines along England’s southeastern coast with the German forces only miles across the channel; and during the war, asks her to assist at his London gallery which fronts for the French Resistance.

Caught between two worlds and the two men she loves, Clara is forced to choose between tradition and class distinction, love and duty and ultimately between passion and responsibility.

21 ALDGATE is about a place in time, a place that no longer exists except in rapidly fading memories. It tells a story of social classes, people and their traditions, a family and its fate, a country and its fight against fascist and a woman with a secret she must take to her grave.

Patricia Friedberg’s screenplay based on her novel 21 ALDGATE, Rainbow Books, Inc., Highland City, Florida, USA. 2010 is in development in the UK to become a major feature film.