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Hamnet
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.
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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 Agnesâ new mother and all traces of Agnesâ 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$tard taking cheap swings at not only Will but now Hamlet. He was a sick man who hated himself and life and he took it out on others. He cheated people and was a mean drunk and couldnât âunderstandâ why people even at the church didnât want to go with him for a drink. Wait, he was bannedâ¦from a church of all places. Now thatâs bad. It was just a bit hard for me to keep up with the chapters jumping back and forth between the timelines because I was already having problems trying to motivate myself to finish the book but it is for my book club so I was committed.
Tbh, again, if it was not for the fact that I was reading this for my book club, I would have put this in the DNF pile.
The grandfather, John, was a mean son of a ba$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 couldnât âunderstandâ why people even at the church didnât want to go with him for a drink. Wait, he was bannedâ¦from a church of all places. Now thatâs 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 find,' he says, his voice still muffled, 'that I am constantly wondering where he is. Where he has gone. It is like a wheel ceaselessly turning at the back of my mind. Whatever I am doing, wherever I am, I am thinking: Where is he, where is he? He can't have just vanished. He must be somewhere. All I have to do is find him. I look for him everywhere, in every street, in every crowd, in every audience. That's what I am doing, when I look out at them all: I try to find him, or a version of him.”
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“She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married.”
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“The sound that comes out of him is choked and smothered, like that of an animal forced to bear a great weight. It is a noise of disbelief, of anguish. Agnes will never forget it. At the end of her life, when her husband has been dead for years, she will still be able to summon its exact pitch and timbre.”
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“He has, Agnes sees, done what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child’s suffering for his own, to take his place, to offer himself up in his child’s stead so that the boy might live. She will say all this to her husband, later, after the play has ended, after the final silence has fallen, after the dead have sprung up to take their places in the line of players at the edge of the stage.”
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“She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married.”
---
“The sound that comes out of him is choked and smothered, like that of an animal forced to bear a great weight. It is a noise of disbelief, of anguish. Agnes will never forget it. At the end of her life, when her husband has been dead for years, she will still be able to summon its exact pitch and timbre.”
---
“He has, Agnes sees, done what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child’s suffering for his own, to take his place, to offer himself up in his child’s stead so that the boy might live. She will say all this to her husband, later, after the play has ended, after the final silence has fallen, after the dead have sprung up to take their places in the line of players at the edge of the stage.”
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.
I'm an avid fan of Shakespeare and now I'm an avid fan of Maggie O'Farrell. I loved this heartbreaking novel. It was beautiful written, the characters - especially Agnes - were wonderful, and it's one that will stay with you long after you close your book. Imagine if the Bard was truly how he was written, imagine if Agnes (aka Anne) were truly as magical as O'Farrell made her out to be. I wish there was more known about Shakespeare's better half, but if you'd like a fictional take on the woman behind the Bard, I highly recommend this novel.
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