Hamnet

Book Title: Hamnet

Author: Maggie O'Farrell

Date Started: November 20th 2021

Date Completed: November 27th 2021

Genres: Historical

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Hamnet is a magical, visceral, enchanting gem of a book. It's about a handful of people and their lives at a time in history we know a lot about in grand terms, but rarely think about in terms of day-to-day life. While parts of it are undoubtedly fictionalised, O'Farrell weaves a wonderful reimagining of the best storyteller perhaps ever to put pen to paper and, more importantly, the people around him.

I knew a little about Shakespeare's life, mostly from school, but O'Farrell makes the history accessible to those who may know nothing. And what a wonderful way to break the canon of male biographies by putting his wife truly at the centre as the protagonist. This isn't to say that the book doesn't celebrate his skills - it absolutely does, despite the fact that the name William Shakespeare isn't mentioned once within these pages.

I'm not going to comment on how accurate it is because I don't know and I don't think it wholly matters. O'Farrell has created one of the most otherworldly and yet insanely cathartic stories around very real people that we know precious little about. As she says at the end of the book, the overachiever William may have been in script didn't translate directly to records; he has an ironic lack of a paper trail. Even more so for the people at a lesser status; his wife, his mother, sister, daughters, even Hamnet himself who is only recorded in his birth and death records. What O'Farrell does is fill in the gaps with gold.

It's not rare knowledge to know that the play Hamlet, a personal favourite for myself and I'm sure millions of others, shared its name with Shakespeare's son who died young. What O'Farrell offers us is a reimagining of why this is so, found at the end of an epic and yet charmingly insular story about a husband and wife who had always tried to escape the world they lived in. It's simply magical to read and fall in love with Agnes, Eliza, Judith, Bartholomew, Susanna, the baker's wife, Edmond, Mary, (not such much Joan and John) - and, of course, Hamnet.