Hamnet
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn, directed by ACADEMY AWARD® winner Chloé Zhao.
The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the years leading up to the production of his great play.
"Miraculous... brilliant... A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer — or curse... A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
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 just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.
The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the years leading up to the production of his great play.
"Miraculous... brilliant... A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer — or curse... A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
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 just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.
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Community Reviews
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✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *Hamnet* by Maggie O’Farrell vividly evokes 16th-century life with lyrical, emotional prose exploring love, grief, and loss. Reviewers agr...
What’s it about?
Maggie O’Farrell has taken a thin outline from the life of William Shakespeare and filled it in with her version of the story. And what an interesting version it is! Apparently, William Shakespeare and his wife had three children. Their only son, Hamnet, dies at the age of 11. Maggie O’Farrell fills in the story from there.
What did it make me think about?
Love, marriage, and grief in the time of Shakespeare.
Should I read it?
Oh, I so enjoyed this story! There is nothing like being taken away and transported to another time and place. This book takes you back to England in the 1500’s- to a world of Black Plague and superstition. Once I started this novel I kept wanting to return to Stratford to find out what was going on with these interesting characters. Any fan of historical fiction will appreciate this story. What took me so long to read it?
Quote-
“What is the word, Judith asks her mother, for someone who was a twin but is no longer a twin?
Her Mother, dipping a folded, doubled wick into heated tallow pauses, but doesn’t turn around.
If you were a wife, Judith continues, and your husband dies, then you are a widow. And if its parents die, a child becomes an orphan. But what is the word for what I am?”
Maggie O’Farrell has taken a thin outline from the life of William Shakespeare and filled it in with her version of the story. And what an interesting version it is! Apparently, William Shakespeare and his wife had three children. Their only son, Hamnet, dies at the age of 11. Maggie O’Farrell fills in the story from there.
What did it make me think about?
Love, marriage, and grief in the time of Shakespeare.
Should I read it?
Oh, I so enjoyed this story! There is nothing like being taken away and transported to another time and place. This book takes you back to England in the 1500’s- to a world of Black Plague and superstition. Once I started this novel I kept wanting to return to Stratford to find out what was going on with these interesting characters. Any fan of historical fiction will appreciate this story. What took me so long to read it?
Quote-
“What is the word, Judith asks her mother, for someone who was a twin but is no longer a twin?
Her Mother, dipping a folded, doubled wick into heated tallow pauses, but doesn’t turn around.
If you were a wife, Judith continues, and your husband dies, then you are a widow. And if its parents die, a child becomes an orphan. But what is the word for what I am?”
I’m really not sure what to think about this book. I was an English major with a concentration in British literature, and taught Hamlet to high school seniors. It’s a well written story about life in Elizabethan England, a mother grieving over the loss of her child and the impact that has on her family. I don’t find the connection to William Shakespeare and his play Hamlet believable. There’s very little character development regarding Hamnet. William Shakespeare is a minor character. He disappears for most of Hamnet’s life, therefore I didn’t get a sense of his connection to his son and his family. I would’ve enjoyed this book more if it was called Agnes and it was the story of a woman living in Elizabethan England and raising children while her husband was absent.
Hamnet transports you to a tragic but enlightening time. Bathed in unforgettable descriptive language and devastating loss, O'Farrell pulls you into this world, showing a way through with art and self-sacrificing love. Agnes is a force.
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