Readers,
This week I am working my way through Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel. Wolf Hall is not the kind of book that can be read in a week, so the review will have to wait. In the interim, I decided to keep a diary - documenting all the places I have been while reading this novel. It's interesting to me where we read, and when, and how we're feeling when we do so. Reading a book like Wolf Hall is kind of like leading a double life: constantly darting between modern day Melbourne and the fractious court of Henry VIII. All this week, I kept finding myself looking up from its pages feeling disoriented and unsure about where I was supposed to be going. Readers, my life isn't that exciting, so I won't make you slog through the gritty details. Instead, here are the highlights:
On the train to work, standing, trying to balance: coffee, book, body, bag. Failing. A few drops of my coffee spills on a man’s shoes, but he doesn’t notice. The train keeps moving, as Wolsey falls.
In my apartment, mid-migraine. All the words are blurry, but it’s better to pretend to read than occupy the pounding in my head.
Outside a Vietnamese takeaway. I still like to pick up my own food late at night. It gets me out of my apartment, onto the street. Tonight, I stand surrounded by ten or fifteen UberEats delivery men, chattering, greeting each other, helmets on. I think, that's smart of them - Who knows when you might crash? I look down as the gossipers agree: Anne Boleyn’s star is on the rise.
Before playing tennis, outside in the sunshine, waiting for my friend to arrive. I'm more worried about whether I'll be tan enough to wear a bathing suit when I go to Mexico in a few weeks, than I am about the plague running through London. But then, I know how the plague will end, and I'm not yet sure about my tan.
On my sofa, early on Sunday morning. In half an hour I'll go to my Anglican church. I'll sit next to my priest's wife and read the Bible in English. My friend Harrison and I will gossip about the quality of the morning tea. It will all be very unremarkable. The irony is not lost on me. "But do you know, Henry says [to Cromwell], I am beginning to care very little about the Pope and his permissions?"
Late in the evening, my apartment: music playing, candles burning, windows open to the late-night noises of my neighborhood. I'm drinking my first glass of rosè in months - herald universal that summer is coming. I take a sip. Cromwell's daughters have died. One of them wanted to learn Greek, but what use is there in educating a woman? I get up and pack my bag for work. I am 1/3rd of the way through Wolf Hall.