I wrote about this on medium: https://medium.com/springboard-thought/for-good-and-ill-wolf-hall-wanders-the-mind-c92ebc1b1292

“Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It’s not as if we had a choice.”

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

Wolf Hall is loved by many. Good reasons for that litter the opinions of various critics all over the world. I am not here to disparage them. I can say, ‘I liked Wolf Hall’ to anyone who asked and it would not be a lie. I may not have the same fanatical twinkle in my eyes that they do, though.
Let me start by saying I am a complete layman when it comes to all history. I entered Wolf Hall knowing very little about this history, in particular. The Tudors have never even been on my radar. Thomas Cromwell was a name that rang no bells in my mind. This ended up being of service to me in an unusual way…while also exposing some assumptions ingrained in the fiction.

I think Wolf Hall is very accessible if you already know about this time period. It feels like someone has sidled up to you while you’ve already been consuming historical fiction set in this time period and they’ve whispered to you that this thing you’ve been reading? It’s fine. You’ve seen the castles and pedigree, and perhaps even heard a rumor or two. But this, my friend, is the tea.

Strengths of Wolf Hall, in no particular order: incredible dialogue. Dialogue that will make you reread it. You’ll laugh out loud and your mouth will make an O when an insult is landed just right — often the delivery is timed perfectly with the end of a section or chapter. The quality of writing is great throughout. The drama and characterizations are buttressed by the historical accuracy of the major plot events. The slights and the torrid affairs that are hinted at in history are given more than a nod here. Its foundation is character drama and context around the sometimes phantasmagoric real-life, actual events. You’d think this was made up. But the larger plot points are for real. And that’s wild.

“…what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too. Show me where it says, in the Bible, ‘Purgatory’. Show me where it says relics, monks, nuns. Show me where it says ‘Pope’.”

The cast, especially royalty, sometimes resemble untamed feral creatures rather than people.
I, a foreigner to history and historical fiction, for the most part, was expecting to get a comprehensive picture of these lives. What was the fashion? What are the trappings of the period? What did a typical house look like? What do these old English castles look like in their prime; how were they decorated? Is this where pottery barn comes from? Or, if not all that, hit me with a sense of the general aesthetic for the time.

Wolf Hall is 650 pages long and has no time to give you these kinds of details.
It is, to its credit and its hindrance, mostly dialogue. I feel comfortable saying it is not a descriptive piece of literature at all. It may be the least descriptive thing I have ever read. (Or that I kept reading, anyway.)

This always caused my mind to wander. I cast about for details about where these people were. What were they wearing? How do they look? Why is it that there is almost no scene-setting throughout?

Being pulled out of fiction is not a positive thing for me. Eventually, I was pulled me back in. Auto-pilot time over. My mind naturally adapted to these incessant wandering by conjuring up the look of the thing derived from the actions and dialogue. It ended up being a surrealist brush that lacked in specific detail but was very rich in color and texture.

Reading became a fever dream.

Cromwell prowled the corridors silently, robes never giving away his many, many intrusions. black forms with the look of vampires — clothed only in black, of course — came to Cromwell at night and whispered secrets stemming from their pressed ears to frail wooden doors, always greedy for the unheard. They tailed targets across grain fields and streams and into church confessionals.
He, Cromwell (Ha!), and the king were the only ones with nuanced facial expressions. Curiously though, the king was clearly an asshole, yet scenes with him always had authenticity and golden sort-of weight to them. Flying out from his face and his hands, there was an almost comical amount of light about his person. The servants of royalty darted about with fear and hatred but always with deft, furtive movements as they lowered grapes into mouths and brought wine and water. These servants had flouncy robes, striped with odd colors, usually two-tone. Always stripes, never other shapes. Why? Who knows.

The court was a dark fantasy pastiche with abstract colors; abstract, blurred faces that stared endlessly.

People on the streets were ragged and bowlegged, denied dyes, and were either in decline currently, from the sweating disease, or else sweaty in general, because they worried they’d get it soon. Merry at breakfast, dead by dinner. Those cast in a minor role were dropping like flies.
Reading Wolf Hall was an interesting experience.

If you can’t tell by now, I have no idea what this time period looked like. I was not kidding. I think it’s fair to say you are expected to know some things about The Tudors and their time period. I have since looked up this era and boy, let me tell you, the things these people put on and flouted are worth describing.

I do not think this assumption of knowing the trappings of the period is a bad one for fiction to have. Even historical fiction. Especially when observing the success of Wolf Hall! But for those showing up wishing to be let into a room with many, exquisitely painted pieces that embody the time period, I do think there will be some disappointment. Look out for vampire whisper network servants. Those things are everywhere.

“He turns to the painting. “I fear Mark was right.”
“Who is Mark?”
“A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer.”
Gregory says, “Did you not know?”