24 Comments

This is really powerful stuff! I'm not a massive historical fiction reader and have been seriously gearing up for Wolf Hall next year. I started dipping into Mantel Pieces for a taste of things to come and I totally see how her writing could get under one's skin.

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Thank you. You know Kat, you say you are not a massive historical fiction reader, but you've spent the year reading a massive work of historical fiction, War and Peace. It's often not what you expect. And that is especially true of Mantel's books.

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You say that, but I don't really count W&P as being an historical novel as he wrote it so soon after the event has occurred. I guess it's like me writing something about the 1960s. Just beyond my own experience but not miles beyond. I'm not sure where 'reminisce' fiction (for want of a better term)ends and historical fiction begins. Someone reviewed a book set in the 1980s and said it was historical fiction. I had to blink back the tears a bit...

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I'd say the 1960s would be historical fiction now. We live in such a different world. And most of the key participants in that decade are gone. Tolstoy was also writing about a world that had disappeared. Anyway, Mantel writes as though it all happened yesterday. Or rather this morning. No. Scratch that. As though it was happening right now.

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Glad about Mantel. Not glad that I'm on the cusp of being historical...

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Oh I know. We're all historical now and I'm not happy about it.

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Substack feels like an emoji free zone but you can imagine...

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Oct 21, 2023Liked by Simon Haisell

I’ve stumbled across you in the rabbit warren of Substack (I think from Terrible at Titles, but who knows!!), and will be taking part in the slow read along next year. I’ve read Wolf Hall and ButB but struggled with them and I like the idea of reading them slowly to hopefully get more from them (as I loved watching them as plays). Actually disappointed I missed W&P as have never read it due to its massiveness!!

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Hey Emma! Great to have you here. I am jealous you've seen the plays, but really looking forward to the slow read. For my sins I am actually doing the War and Peace Readalong next year as well. So take your pick! Maybe not both. 🙈🙈

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“Everyone makes their own way into a book”

Love that line, that’s the magic of reading.

Really of any story based medium (tv, movies) but it’s most potent in books, I believe

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Definitely. All kinds of stories. And they are different every time you come back to them.

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Beautiful opening, Simon - yes, I think I will try to join the Wolf Hall read-along, I've never done such a thing before except a short lived and contentious membership in a gay book group named "Claws Out."

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Shortlived and contentious! Haha, hope there wasn't any blood. This should be fairly civil. Although many heads will role before the year is out. Great to have you along.

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Sep 22, 2023Liked by Simon Haisell

I am so excited for this next year! And every time you talk about A Place of Greater Safety I get closer to starting it, but it may have to be a 2025 project at this point. 😂

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Definitely worth the time. Half thinking about doing it in 2025 as well. But maybe too soon for me.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by Simon Haisell

Oh, please do a Place of Greater Safety sometime this decade! I read it for the first time last summer (after reading everything else HM has written at least once). I was blown away, but I read it too voraciously, and now I wish I had read more slowly and thoughtfully. It's too late to read it that way the first time, but not a second! And doing so in good company would be such a good way to honor her.

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I am very tempted by this idea!

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Gorgeous tribute!

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Thanks Anne!

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Lovely essay! I never knew, before reading Wolf Hall, how deeply, almost painfully, intimate the third person narration could be. Plus Mantel captures perfectly the shifting tides of memory and thought, from the past to the present via the most inconsequential of things, even a single word.

You've made me even more excited to reread the trilogy next year!

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