Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Mar. 22nd, 2026 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Agnes eyes it, then takes it with two fingers and flattens it against her mud splattered apron. For a moment she cannot tell what she is looking at. It is a printed page. There are many letters, so many, in rows, grouped into words. There is her husband’s name, at the top, and the word ‘tragedie’. And there, right in the middle, in the largest letters of all, is the name of her son, her boy.
On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a 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 one of the children will not survive the week.
Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; a kestrel and its mistress, and a glovemaker’s son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.
It is summer, 1596.
11-year-old Hamnet and his twin sister Judith live in Stratford-upon-Avon with their mother, Agnes, older sister Susanna and their paternal grandparents John (a glove maker) and his wife Mary. Their father lives 2 days journey away in London, where he works, although he comes home when he can.
Hamnet and Judith have been given tasks to do in the kitchen but Judith suddenly complains that she feels unwell and goes up to bed, feverish and weak. When Hamnet sees that buboes are forming under her skin he knows that this is serious and desperately tries to find an adult to help. He knows that his mother is skilled at healing - people in the town frequently come to her for her poultices and cures - but she’s over a mile away at her brother’s farm helping to deal with a bee swarm. His grandfather, John, is in a foul mood - as he often is these days - too busy scheming to regain the status he lost among the town’s elite. His grandmother and Susanna are out running errands. And so Hamnet does the only thing he can do: he curls up next to his sister and he waits …
Maggie O’Farrell’s gripping historical novel (now an Oscar-winning film) is about love, grief and making sense of personal tragedy, all shown through the lense of Shakespeare’s family (although the man himself is never named). Shown mainly through the eyes of his wife, Agnes (here a determined woman with a supernatural ability to tell a person’s fate) it’s above all else a very human story that shows Shakespeare as both a man and a playwright.
I picked this up because O’Farrell has long been one of those authors who I have heard great things about from friends and reviewers who I trust but with the exception of her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am, the back copy of her books had never grabbed me. I liked the fact that in the author’s foreword she says that she’d been thinking about this book for 30 years, ever since she learnt in school that - SPOILER ALERT - Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet who died 4 years before he wrote the play Hamlet.
The fact that there isn’t a great deal known about Shakespeare - and even less about his wife Agnes (or Anne) gives her a huge amount of leeway in this novel and yet nothing about the story or the relationships feels far-fetched or, dare I say it, fanficcy. The story moves time periods from Judith and then Hamnet falling sick in 1596 to look back at how their parents first met - and then follow through the progress of the plague on the family and then the family’s reactions to Hamnet’s death and how they try to deal with their grief.
O’Farrell’s focus in the novel is on Shakespeare’s wife. I found myself feeling a lot of empathy with the strong, wilful Agnes who is depicted here as a woman whose supernatural abilities mean that when she first meets her half-siblings tutor, she sees the greatness within him and knows that marrying him is her own ticket away from over-bearing step-mother Joan. Agnes is able to divine the fate of others by grasping their hand and whose ability to commune with nature means she can concoct cures for common ailments and is frequently sought by others. However she is left blind-sided by her failure to foretell the death of her own son and the failure of her potions to cure him, to a point where grief and disbelief leave her almost catatonic.
Although more of a supporting than a leading character, I thoroughly enjoyed O’Farrell’s portrayal of Shakespeare as a man and the fact that in many ways he is a weak man. Dominated by his father - the bullying, cunning John who is constantly looking for an edge back into society, having lost his position as bailiff in disgrace - he is traded to the farm where Agnes and her brother, Bartholomew live to teach their step-mother Joan’s children in settlement of a debt that John owed Joan’s now dead husband. He has no interest in the glove making business, but lacks the strength both to decide what he does want to do and to then go and do it. It is Agnes who sees the greatness within him and Agnes who realises that the only way for him to achieve it is to force him to go to London, even though she hates to be separated from him. Once Hamnet dies, Shakespeare lacks the strength to stay with his family and process his grief with them and on the few occasions when he does venture home, Agnes senses the women he has been with. Indeed, one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the book for me is when he comes home and gives Agnes a bracelet that she realises has come from or been picked by one of his other women because there is no doubt in this book that this is a love match between Will and Agnes (and I particularly liked the Easter egg that O’Farrell drops regarding the second-best bed).
O’Farrell is careful to give insights into other members of the family as well. We see Judith as the second-born and weaker of the twins and her guilt that her twin has taken her place with death. There is the resentful Susanna who takes over the running of the home for her mother and manages her business of making cures to make sure that she is properly compensated. We also see Mary’s frustration and inability to know what to make of her strange daughter-in-law - the scenes where she frustrates Agnes’s attempt to give birth in the woods shows the friction between them but also how Mary acts how she does out of concern, having lost a child of her own.
I usually struggle a little with literary fiction because it tends to be description heavy, which can seem affected and distant but O’Farrell writes with great sensitivity and I think the historical setting helps to make the heavily descriptive prose and O’Farrell’s writing quirks more contextualised. I genuinely found myself gripped by the story and very moved by what happens within it and will definitely check out O’Farrell’s other fiction now that I know what to expect.
The Verdict:
Maggie O’Farrell’s gripping historical novel (now an Oscar-winning film) is about love, grief and making sense of personal tragedy, all shown through the lense of Shakespeare’s family (although the man himself is never named). Shown mainly through the eyes of his wife, Agnes (here a determined woman with a supernatural ability to tell a person’s fate) it’s above all else a very human story that shows Shakespeare as both a man and a playwright.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a 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 one of the children will not survive the week.
Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; a kestrel and its mistress, and a glovemaker’s son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.
It is summer, 1596.
11-year-old Hamnet and his twin sister Judith live in Stratford-upon-Avon with their mother, Agnes, older sister Susanna and their paternal grandparents John (a glove maker) and his wife Mary. Their father lives 2 days journey away in London, where he works, although he comes home when he can.
Hamnet and Judith have been given tasks to do in the kitchen but Judith suddenly complains that she feels unwell and goes up to bed, feverish and weak. When Hamnet sees that buboes are forming under her skin he knows that this is serious and desperately tries to find an adult to help. He knows that his mother is skilled at healing - people in the town frequently come to her for her poultices and cures - but she’s over a mile away at her brother’s farm helping to deal with a bee swarm. His grandfather, John, is in a foul mood - as he often is these days - too busy scheming to regain the status he lost among the town’s elite. His grandmother and Susanna are out running errands. And so Hamnet does the only thing he can do: he curls up next to his sister and he waits …
Maggie O’Farrell’s gripping historical novel (now an Oscar-winning film) is about love, grief and making sense of personal tragedy, all shown through the lense of Shakespeare’s family (although the man himself is never named). Shown mainly through the eyes of his wife, Agnes (here a determined woman with a supernatural ability to tell a person’s fate) it’s above all else a very human story that shows Shakespeare as both a man and a playwright.
I picked this up because O’Farrell has long been one of those authors who I have heard great things about from friends and reviewers who I trust but with the exception of her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am, the back copy of her books had never grabbed me. I liked the fact that in the author’s foreword she says that she’d been thinking about this book for 30 years, ever since she learnt in school that - SPOILER ALERT - Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet who died 4 years before he wrote the play Hamlet.
The fact that there isn’t a great deal known about Shakespeare - and even less about his wife Agnes (or Anne) gives her a huge amount of leeway in this novel and yet nothing about the story or the relationships feels far-fetched or, dare I say it, fanficcy. The story moves time periods from Judith and then Hamnet falling sick in 1596 to look back at how their parents first met - and then follow through the progress of the plague on the family and then the family’s reactions to Hamnet’s death and how they try to deal with their grief.
O’Farrell’s focus in the novel is on Shakespeare’s wife. I found myself feeling a lot of empathy with the strong, wilful Agnes who is depicted here as a woman whose supernatural abilities mean that when she first meets her half-siblings tutor, she sees the greatness within him and knows that marrying him is her own ticket away from over-bearing step-mother Joan. Agnes is able to divine the fate of others by grasping their hand and whose ability to commune with nature means she can concoct cures for common ailments and is frequently sought by others. However she is left blind-sided by her failure to foretell the death of her own son and the failure of her potions to cure him, to a point where grief and disbelief leave her almost catatonic.
Although more of a supporting than a leading character, I thoroughly enjoyed O’Farrell’s portrayal of Shakespeare as a man and the fact that in many ways he is a weak man. Dominated by his father - the bullying, cunning John who is constantly looking for an edge back into society, having lost his position as bailiff in disgrace - he is traded to the farm where Agnes and her brother, Bartholomew live to teach their step-mother Joan’s children in settlement of a debt that John owed Joan’s now dead husband. He has no interest in the glove making business, but lacks the strength both to decide what he does want to do and to then go and do it. It is Agnes who sees the greatness within him and Agnes who realises that the only way for him to achieve it is to force him to go to London, even though she hates to be separated from him. Once Hamnet dies, Shakespeare lacks the strength to stay with his family and process his grief with them and on the few occasions when he does venture home, Agnes senses the women he has been with. Indeed, one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the book for me is when he comes home and gives Agnes a bracelet that she realises has come from or been picked by one of his other women because there is no doubt in this book that this is a love match between Will and Agnes (and I particularly liked the Easter egg that O’Farrell drops regarding the second-best bed).
O’Farrell is careful to give insights into other members of the family as well. We see Judith as the second-born and weaker of the twins and her guilt that her twin has taken her place with death. There is the resentful Susanna who takes over the running of the home for her mother and manages her business of making cures to make sure that she is properly compensated. We also see Mary’s frustration and inability to know what to make of her strange daughter-in-law - the scenes where she frustrates Agnes’s attempt to give birth in the woods shows the friction between them but also how Mary acts how she does out of concern, having lost a child of her own.
I usually struggle a little with literary fiction because it tends to be description heavy, which can seem affected and distant but O’Farrell writes with great sensitivity and I think the historical setting helps to make the heavily descriptive prose and O’Farrell’s writing quirks more contextualised. I genuinely found myself gripped by the story and very moved by what happens within it and will definitely check out O’Farrell’s other fiction now that I know what to expect.
The Verdict:
Maggie O’Farrell’s gripping historical novel (now an Oscar-winning film) is about love, grief and making sense of personal tragedy, all shown through the lense of Shakespeare’s family (although the man himself is never named). Shown mainly through the eyes of his wife, Agnes (here a determined woman with a supernatural ability to tell a person’s fate) it’s above all else a very human story that shows Shakespeare as both a man and a playwright.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
