Hamnet

I have almost no idea what the book was about when I reflect on my experience, but I felt like I was there, and it was beautiful. Poetic, sumptuous, immersive descriptions of the touch of leather, the smell of drying apples, a passing thought that latches onto another. Apparently a young mopey Shakespeare was running around somewhere in the book but I barely saw him. Read this book for the love of language, not a forever fast-forwarding plot.

Upon reading this book, I tried to pinpoint my restlessness with the writing and the story and realised that the title should not have been Hamnet, but Agnes. O'Farrell writes of Shakespeare's wife, Agnes (listed in a will by that name, colloquially called Anne) and her life from child to adult to wife and mother. When she loses her son, Hamnet, it is her undoing. O'Farrell feels her way around grief; the absence of her child and a part of herself. The writing is meandering, thoroughly touching all parts of a tragedy that affects them all, but centred on the mother. The unfolding of this story is slow and sometimes feels stagnant. I was definitely expecting a different story and was left feeling a little disappointed.

There is a theory that the plays of William Shakespeare are about different emotions (Parris 2011). According to this theory, Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet is about grief. Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague which was published in 2020 is also about grief. Hamnet and Hamlet were used interchangeably in the records of the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The central character of the novel is Anne Hathaway. O’Farrell uses the spelling Anges which the writer Bill Bryson writes that Anges may have been used interchangeably with the name Ann in England in the 16th Century (Bryson 41). In this novel, Anges Hathaway is a “wise woman” of the 16th Century like the woman in Monica Furlong’s novel The Wise Child. Hathaway runs a small folk medicine practice, that uses some of the plants that appear in the Shakespearean plays. Shakespeare in his plays mentions 180 plants (Bryson 107). O’Farrell writes in the “Author’s Note” of Hamnet “It is not known why Hamnet Shakespeare died: his burial is listed but not the cause of his death.” A play beside Hamlet that some people believe references the death of Hamnet is King John which has a reference to the grief of a parent over the loss of a child (Bryson 118-119 & Parris 2011). Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Hamnet is a well-written and thoughtful novel about grief. Works Cited: Bill, Bryson. 2016. Shakespeare: The World as a Stage. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle. Furlong, Monica. 1989. Wise Child. New York: Alfred A. Kopf. Parris, Matthew. “William Shakespeare.” British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Great Lives. August 30, 2011. Podcast, website, 27:45 minutes. Great Lives - William Shakespeare - BBC Sounds

I am not in love with this book at all but I will say my heart went out to Agnes. Especially when they spoke about her mother coming out of the forbidden woods and married her father and then died. Then that horrible sister became Agnes’ new mother and all traces of Agnes’ mother were quickly erased. How Agnes longed to be just held and loved. It was heartbreaking. Then when she meets Will Shakespeare and later, he starts to have extramarital affairs and by this time, Agnes could care less.

The grandfather, John, was a mean son of a ba$tard taking cheap swings at not only Will but now Hamlet. He was a sick man who hated himself and life and he took it out on others. He cheated people and was a mean drunk and couldn’t “understand” why people even at the church didn’t want to go with him for a drink. Wait, he was banned…from a church of all places. Now that’s bad. It was just a bit hard for me to keep up with the chapters jumping back and forth between the timelines because I was already having problems trying to motivate myself to finish the book but it is for my book club so I was committed.

Tbh, again, if it was not for the fact that I was reading this for my book club, I would have put this in the DNF pile.

I’m so sad I’ll never again be able to read this for the first time.