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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jul 2020, 320 pages
Paperback:
May 2021, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Rachel Hullett
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"Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare's life … here is a novel … so gorgeously written that it transports you." —The Boston Globe
England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.
A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family's land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
Excerpt
Hamnet
A boy is coming down a flight of stairs.
The passage is narrow and twists back on itself. He takes each step slowly, sliding himself along the wall, his boots meeting each tread with a thud.
Near the bottom, he pauses for a moment, looking back the way he has come. Then, suddenly resolute, he leaps the final three stairs, as is his habit. He stumbles as he lands, falling to his knees on the flagstone floor.
It is a close, windless day in late summer, and the downstairs room is slashed by long strips of light. The sun glowers at him from outside, the windows latticed slabs of yellow, set into the plaster.
He gets up, rubbing his legs. He looks one way, up the stairs; he looks the other, unable to decide which way he should turn.
The room is empty, the fire ruminating in its grate, orange embers below soft, spiralling smoke. His injured kneecaps throb in time with his heartbeat. He stands with one hand resting on the latch of the door to the stairs, the scuffed leather tip of ...
Here are some of the comments posted about Hamnet.
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Agnes's husband says of her that it is a joy and a curse to be married to 'Someone who knows everything about you, before you even know it yourself.' Can you relate to this feeling at all?
I'm not sure I can relate to that idea of someone knowing everything about me. My husband and I have been married almost 50 years. I hope there are still parts of both of us to discover! - djcminor
Based on the portrayal of the play in this novel, how are Hamnet and his father, and Hamlet (the character) and his father related to one another?
I wish I could answer this question! But I have never been a reader of Shakespeare’s plays; I only know loosely what they are about. So I don’t have enough knowledge to give this question a good answer. - juliep
Discuss the significance of names in the novel overall. Who is afforded their own name, and who is known exclusively by their relation to others?
I found it interesting that Shakespeare's name is never mentioned. In some ways, it helped take the spotlight off him, and focus it on Agnes and the children. But it also was a little frustrating to have the most famous character in the book ... - celiaarnaud
Discuss the twins' last moments together.
Hamnet's death was one of the most poignant scenes in the novel. Such love that he had for his sister! I don't believe that he actually changed places with her, but it was just a twist of fate that took him instead of her. As Agnes ... - mtnluvr
How do Mary, Joan, and Agnes differ in their approach to women's work in the world and rearing children, especially their daughters? How do you feel Agnes's insights affect her decisions as a mother?
Agnes always knew she was different, that she had an affinity with nature and using nature to heal people. She worked hard as a wife and mother, but a lot of her time and energy went to her healing arts. Her visions also affected her - she saw ... - juliep
National Book Critics Circle Award
2020
The first two-thirds of the novel are split into a dual timeline, bouncing back and forth between the week of Hamnet's death (the present), and the blossoming romance between William and Agnes (the past). It's a tender yet fraught courtship, and the pacing here is slow and deliberate. The final third speeds up and takes place after the death of their son. Both parts are equally as successful — the languid pace is sustained by O'Farrell's lyrical prose, and the more frantic pace is made tense and urgent by it. O'Farrell imagines the subtler influences of Agnes and Hamnet on Shakespeare in a novel that's as intimate and human as it is grandiose...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
Dominic Dromgoole, author of Hamlet, Globe to Globe
I don't know how anyone could fail to love this book. It is a marvel: a great work of imaginative recreation and a great story. It is also a moral achievement to have transformed that young child from being a literary footnote into someone so tenderly alive that part of you wishes he had survived and Hamlet never been written. Emma Donoghue, author of Room
What could be more common, over centuries and continents, than the death of a child - and yet Maggie O'Farrell, with her flawless sentences and furious heart, somehow makes it new. This story of remarkable people bereft of their boy will leave you shaking with loss but also the love from which family is spun. Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall
Grief and loss so finely written I could hardly bear to read it.
Little is known about Shakespeare's family, names and birth dates aside — and even names are tricky. Though commonly referred to as Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife may have actually been named Agnes, according to a will left by her father. O'Farrell makes the decision to use the name Agnes in her novel Hamnet, but she references this confusion in the narrative itself, in a scene where she introduces herself as Agnes but Shakespeare mishears her and thinks she said Anne.
The real Agnes, or Anne, was born in 1556, likely in a town called Shottery near Stratford, and was raised by father Richard, a local landowner, and stepmother Joan in a one-story farmhouse called Hewley Farm. There were eight children in their home, three by Anne...
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