Hamnet - by Maggie O'Farrell

"Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare's life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you. --The Boston Globe

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.

Review Quotes

"All too timely . . . inspired. . . . [An] exceptional historical novel "
--The New Yorker

Magnificent and searing. . . . A family saga so bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection. . . . Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare's life, about whether he even wrote his own plays, here is a novel that matches him with a woman overwhelmingly more than worthy.
--The Boston Globe

A tour de force. . . . Hamnet vividly captures the life-changing intensity of maternity in its myriad stages--from the pain of childbirth to the unassuagable grief of loss. Fierce emotions and lyrical prose are what we've come to expect of O'Farrell.
--NPR

O'Farrell moves through the family's pain like a master of signs and signals. . . . In Hamnet, art imitates life not to co-opt reality, but to help us bear it.
--Los Angeles Times

Wholly original, fully engrossing. . . . Agnes is a character for the ages--engimatic, fully formed and nearly literally bewitching to behold in every scene she's in.
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A moving portrait of a mother's grief. . . . O'Farrell's prose is characteristically beautiful."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Evocative. . . . [Hamnet] is also life-affirming as it suggests ways art can transcend misfortune."
--National Review

"Superb. . . . O'Farrell's exquisitely wrought eighth novel proves once again what a very fine writer she is."
--Financial Times

"Elliptical, dreamlike. . . . [Hamnet] confirms O'Farrell as an extraordinarily versatile writer, with a profound understanding of the most elemental human bonds--qualities also possessed by a certain former Latin tutor from Stratford."
--The Observer (UK)

"A remarkable piece of work. . . . O'Farrell is one of the most surprisingly quiet radicals in fiction."
--The Scotsman (UK)

"[A] portrayal of grief and pain. . . . O'Farrell describes these agonies with such power that Hamnet would resonate at any time."
--The Guardian

"[O'Farrell is] a writer of rare emotional intelligence whose personal intimations of mortality bear rich fruit in this, her eighth novel."
--Evening Standard

"This artfully paced novel is an anatomy of grief. . . . Just when the novel's second part seems to be moving to a tragic conclusion, it mounts a stunning redemptive volte-face."
--The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author