Hamnet

Maggie O’Farrell

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Two extraordinary people. A love that draws them together. A loss that threatens to tear them apart.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.

Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.

'The novel of her career... everyone I know who has managed to get hold of a copy is absolutely in love with it.'

'Blisteringly brilliant... You'll lap up this intricately told story of grief, love and the bond between twins .'

Review by Ben Macnair (020422) Rating (8/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 8/10
Hamnet has one of the country’s most famed writers at the centre of it, but William Shakespeare is never mentioned by name. This is the story of Hamnet, Shakespeare’s ill-fated son who died as a child aged eleven, but whose name lives on in one of most celebrated plays of all time.

Hamnet is a story of grief, of loss, of family, of love. It is a story about twins, Judith and Hamnet, and older sister Susanna and their love and devotion to each other. It is also a novel about work, about the fatal spread of the plague, the difficulties of the time, and the timeless subjects of generational details.

Set in 1596, it follows the life of Hamnet, as he cares for his ailing sister as she has a fever. He looks everywhere for his family, but they are nowhere to be found. As Judith’s fever becomes worse, Hamnet himself soon also succumbs.

His father works away in London, far away from the family home in Stratford-upon-Avon, his mother is away, growing the herbs she hopes can save lives. As the story develops, we learn more about the family, about the times in a novel that is rich in language, description, characters and pathos. Although it is a relatively long book at 372 pages, it needs that amount of space to tell its tale.

Very little is known about Shakespeare’s children, and very few records of them remain, except for the title of Hamlet, and the preponderance of Twins in some of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare was only 18 when he married Anne Hathaway (here renamed as Agnes) and at the time was a Glove-Maker’s son, working for his father in Stratford-upon-Avon, before the bright lights of the stage and theatre called him, and made him world famous many centuries after his death.

The ending of the novel, when Hamlet has been written, and performed is also a particular revealing insight into how Anne Hathaway saw Shakespeare, as her husband, and the father of her children rather than the world famous playwright. It is this level of fictional intimacy, and the way that the characters relate to each other, both with Hamnet’s death, the spread of the plague, that gives the novel its incendiary power and heart-breaking story-line.

Hamnet is incredibly well written, balancing the sadness and pathos of the central actions with details of everyday life in London and Stratford-upon-Avon. It is meticulously well researched, but none of the historical elements of the story take away from the central themes of loss, family, and how life has to continue even after catastrophic events happen.
Ben Macnair ( 2022)