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That was my problem, too. Written in a strange tense -what, second person present tense? And yes, it was usually Cromwell, unless there were two he's in the sentence!
Sorry, but that's not true, Alec. Probably 95 percent of the time, "he" refers to Cromwell, but that other five percent is just often enough to throw the whole thing into confusion. It's either sloppy editing, or a poor decision by Mantel.
It IS strange - and my book group really went to town with it. The use of 'he' was a brilliant device by Mantel, in my mind. Notice that we don't get any exposition about the people Cromwell encounters - it's as though we are Cromwell coming at them; Cromwell doesn't need to explain who these people are to himself, he just knows (of course, I didn't so I had to keep referring to her handy guides.) The point of view is a kind of second person/first person - 'he' is the perfect pronoun for a man who doesn't know how he projects. Notice how often people tell him he looks like a murderer? But do we have ANY sense of that from the way the story is told? No, because it's being told from Cromwell's point of view. A man who is much more sensitive than he projects, but not in the least self aware. I get the sense that he's a force of nature the way he just IS. And it being neither really first person nor omniscient narrator is ideal for the oblique view we have of Cromwell. This is a character study about a self-made man - a perfect character for a time when all of the old order is falling apart. Can you tell I loved it?
Amazing book--not an easy read, but not especially difficult either. But it's also character driven--like most literary work. So the story isn't so much about what happens, but who it happens to. One of my favorites.
Marietta wrote: "It IS strange - and my book group really went to town with it. The use of 'he' was a brilliant device by Mantel, in my mind. Notice that we don't get any exposition about the people Cromwell encoun..."
Well said, Marietta. Mantel puts us into the mind of Cromwell...and what a mind it is! I couldn't get enough--read both of the Cromwell books straight through and looking forward to the third.
Donna did you feel in Bring Up the Bodies that Cromwell was a little less intimately drawn? I am loving it (reading it now) but don't feel the same immediacy I had with Wolf Hall. And it seems fairly obvious that some editor went in and clarified the 'he' - often there's a sentence "he, Cromwell ...." Don't get me wrong - I am bereft when I don't have the book with me, but Bring Up the Bodies does feel a little more conventional.
Actually I found the opposite of this to be true and this made it hard to read (and I loved the book). Really hard to work out just who 'he' is sometimes
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Jean
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Jul 31, 2012 11:09PM
That was my problem, too. Written in a strange tense -what, second person present tense? And yes, it was usually Cromwell, unless there were two he's in the sentence!
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Sorry, but that's not true, Alec. Probably 95 percent of the time, "he" refers to Cromwell, but that other five percent is just often enough to throw the whole thing into confusion. It's either sloppy editing, or a poor decision by Mantel.
It IS strange - and my book group really went to town with it. The use of 'he' was a brilliant device by Mantel, in my mind. Notice that we don't get any exposition about the people Cromwell encounters - it's as though we are Cromwell coming at them; Cromwell doesn't need to explain who these people are to himself, he just knows (of course, I didn't so I had to keep referring to her handy guides.) The point of view is a kind of second person/first person - 'he' is the perfect pronoun for a man who doesn't know how he projects. Notice how often people tell him he looks like a murderer? But do we have ANY sense of that from the way the story is told? No, because it's being told from Cromwell's point of view. A man who is much more sensitive than he projects, but not in the least self aware. I get the sense that he's a force of nature the way he just IS. And it being neither really first person nor omniscient narrator is ideal for the oblique view we have of Cromwell. This is a character study about a self-made man - a perfect character for a time when all of the old order is falling apart. Can you tell I loved it?
Amazing book--not an easy read, but not especially difficult either. But it's also character driven--like most literary work. So the story isn't so much about what happens, but who it happens to. One of my favorites.
Marietta wrote: "It IS strange - and my book group really went to town with it. The use of 'he' was a brilliant device by Mantel, in my mind. Notice that we don't get any exposition about the people Cromwell encoun..."Well said, Marietta. Mantel puts us into the mind of Cromwell...and what a mind it is! I couldn't get enough--read both of the Cromwell books straight through and looking forward to the third.
Donna did you feel in Bring Up the Bodies that Cromwell was a little less intimately drawn? I am loving it (reading it now) but don't feel the same immediacy I had with Wolf Hall. And it seems fairly obvious that some editor went in and clarified the 'he' - often there's a sentence "he, Cromwell ...." Don't get me wrong - I am bereft when I don't have the book with me, but Bring Up the Bodies does feel a little more conventional.
Actually I found the opposite of this to be true and this made it hard to read (and I loved the book). Really hard to work out just who 'he' is sometimes
