Two: the sum total of the last six weeks’ “reading”, consisting of one proper read and one re-read via audio book of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, the first step of Simon Haisell’s 2024 #Wolfcrawl through the Cromwell Trilogy.

Actually I wolf-crawled at a trot through Wolf Hall over a period of three weeks, mainly because it was pretty impossible to identify the official 17-week 40-60 page allocations. Always intended to do it this way given that I bought the whole trilogy in audio format after being blown away by the audio performance of A Place of Greater Safety a couple of years ago. Wolf Hall as an audio is a completely different experience, given that the whole is narrated through the point of view of one man, Thomas Cromwell, so there is much less scope for a range of voices to brighten up the narrative. This makes it a story that must be listened to carefully, and that makes a perfect accompaniment to knitting (my favourite occupation in stressful times!)

Hard to believe that it’s 13 years since I my first outing with Wolf Hall, and I stand by the view that Wolf Hall is the finest historical novel of the C21st (and will remain so for many years to come.) Listening to it accentuated Mantel’s meticulous planning. The first sentence of Wolf Hall is legendary with its mirroring of the final sentence of the whole trilogy, but when you know what’s coming – not only in the purely historical sense, but through odd sentences and scenes that stick with you – hairs on the back of the neck stand on end. Cromwell is advised at one point, not to get in bed with the Boleyns. There’s the play mocking his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, following his fall from grace. Remember this scene, my English teacher would have urged. It returns in Bring Up The Bodies, and is so important for a full understanding of Cromwell’s character.

Control is the essence of both Mantel’s Cromwell and her novel. Not something that can be said of Hans Fallada’s 1937 novel, Wolf among Wolves, which at 797 pages is very long and baggy. It could be read as a Bildungsroman, one in which the young, irresponsible Wolfgang Pagel (Wolf in the title) matures from a compulsive gambler into a responsible family man, passing through the chaos of the 1923 hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic.

At the beginning of the novel, July 1923, one dollar equalled 414, 000 marks. Twelve months later when the Papiermark was replaced by the Reichsmark, one dollar equalled an astounding 1 trillion marks! How did people survive this? In the first instance by rushing to make any purchases before 12 noon, when the new exchange rate was published, and they may no longer have had enough money to pay for their goods. Assuming they had money, savings or possessions to sell in the first place.

The desperation for money is apparent in the early chapters which are set in Berlin, where Wolfgang Pagel and his live-in girlfriend, Petra, are living in a tenement hovel. Their only income, Wolfgang’s modest winnings. Where does he get the money to gamble? From pawning Petra’s clothes and possessions. Until the day that the pawnbroker refuses to pawn the goods, but buys them for a pittance instead.

It’s the day before Wolfgang and Petra are to be married. So he obliges his estranged mother to give him a valuable painting which he sells to finance an all night-bender at an illegal casino. While his motive might be to win enough to secure the couple’s future, that night has other things in store. He meets his former senior officer from the army, Ritter von Prackwitz, and his farm manager, who, after everything has been lost, persuade him to move to their farming estate in Neulohe, East Prussia, to become an administrator. He goes, without further ado, leaving Petra with just a coat to her name!

Life at Neulohe seems relatively stable in comparison to the desperation of existence in Berlin. Slowly but surely though the cracks begin to show. Von Prackwitz, in addition to being a man with no interest in agricultural life, is being driven to ruin by his spiteful father-in-law from whom he rents the estate. Plus there are no workers to gather the crops. (Ironic given the scale of unemployment at the time). The drafting in of a group of convicts ends disastrously. Personal relationships are just as chaotic. 15-year old Violet von Prackwitz is infatuated with a mysterious Lieutenant, who is part of a paramilitary plot to overthrow the government. At the same time a creepy butler is becoming obsessed with Violet. More subplots thicken in parallel, with those at Neulohe depending more and more on our flighty Wolfgang to hold things together.

In the interim, he becomes a new man. Letters from Berlin reveal what has happened to Petra in the meantime – not all of it pretty, but she too has found her feet, even if she is pregnant. She will not take the delighted father-to-be back until he comes up with a responsible plan for the future. Well his experience at Neulohe has given him a new perspective on life and so a happy ending is in the offing.

For this reason some view Wolf among Wolves as a love story, but it’s much more than than. It’s a portrait of a society falling apart. The big city, Berlin, is already broken and past the point of moral return at the start; the demise of the countryside follows inexorably. With a huge cast of characters each pursuing their own ends, and more subplots than I can count, it is confusing in parts. Hyperrealistic in the telling, the novel is a prime example of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Particularly hypnotic are the scenes describing the intoxication of the compulsive gambler at the roulette table. Not sure if gambling was one of Fallada’s vices, but he does describe the mindset convincingly. The style is down-to-earth and mostly driven by dialogue, which frequently leads to scenes being longer than they need to be. A good pruning at editorial stage would have served this novel well.