Author: Maggie O'Farrell
Title: Hamnet
Publisher: Tinder Press
Date Published: 03/31/2020
Read Dates: 04/07/2025- 04/14/2025
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐💫
This was my book club pick for April.
Hamnet is a multi POV historical fiction novel that primarily focuses on Agnes, a wife and mother, and her young son Hamnet. It is based on Shakespeare’s family without ever naming him directly, keeping the focus on the family he left behind in Stratford rather than on him.
This was well written and I enjoyed it when I was reading it, but when I put it down I didn’t feel any urgency to pick it up again. I stopped about 2/3 of the way through and only picked it up to finish because I wanted it read before my book club meeting. A good book but not one that grabbed me in particular
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Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.
Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.
Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.
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