A proof of Wolf Hall landed on my desk with a note from Nick at Fourth Estate:
“A masterpiece.”
But life was happening. A break-up. A young business that needed every decision to be right. I was reading under pressure, not reading with ease. Reading to decide, not to discover.
I opened the book with reverence. I admired Hilary Mantel. I still do. But within pages, I felt myself slipping. Thomas. Thomas. Thomas. I was unsure who I was with or where I was. I tried to force clarity, as though effort alone could unlock brilliance. In truth, I was not ready.
When I put the book down, it was not because I thought it was bad. It was because I felt relief. A quiet escape. I did not walk away because I disliked it. I walked away because it asked more of me than I was able to give in that moment.
To have continued would have meant risking being wrong. It would have meant time. Money. Reputation. Belief. And at that point in my life, I did not have space for risk. I needed certainty. Fast reads. Clear hooks. Early clarity. Wolf Hall did not offer that.
When the Booker Prize was announced on 6 October 2009, the realisation did not arrive gently. It came as heat. Tightening. And a sentence that still sits in my memory:
I am not intelligent enough for this.
Years later, I can see that this was not the truth. The truth is more straightforward. I did not have the emotional or practical space to meet the book on its terms.
Since then, my relationship with reading has changed.
I allow books to unsettle me. I allow slowness. I allow confusion. I give books room to teach me how to read them, instead of insisting that they fit the pace or state I am in that day.
And I no longer confuse timing with taste.
Sometimes you do not love a book because you cannot. Not yet. You are tired. You are grieving. You are overwhelmed. You are reading for answers when the book wants to give you questions.
There is no shame in that.
Books do not just meet us. We meet them. Sometimes the most powerful books arrive before we are ready.
Put them down. Live more life. One day, you may pick them up again and finally see the masterpiece.
At Goldsboro, we believe the right book at the wrong time is still the right book. It is simply waiting.
