I have had this book on my list to read for far too long. I was waiting for a long weekend so that I could relax and absorb this potentially wonderful book. I have not been disappointed!
If you have doubts about reading this title or have been putting it off, just go for it! It’s magnificent.

Thank you Netgalley for this review copy.
I did not expect to like this book, hence why I left it so long to read. However, having watched a documentary on its creation, I decided to give it a go. It had a surprising natural flow of words to it and I couldn't help but read it through in a couple of days
I thought It was very clever how Maggie did not mention Shakespeares name at all throughout yet you knew who he was. Very clever writing and enthralling read

I have been dying to read this for over two years. Maggie O'Farrell is one of my all time favourite authors. Unfortunately though I faint when things bother me and I know that this book features the death of a young boy. I have a son and this just goes to a really dark place for me. I wish I was exaggerating. I have a plan that I will read this when my son is older than the child in the book but that takes me to about another eight years or so. I can only apologise - I actually have a hard copy of it too and I will read it and no doubt give a rapturous review when I am able.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.

Hamnet is a well written story on love, loss and death. Set in 16th century England, written in a way that captures you and takes you straight there, Hamnet follows a timeline of how Shakespeare (present but not named in the book) and his wife meet and how their family grows, the point of Hamnet’s death and beyond following the journey of grief that is experienced by Agnes.
Although in places it seemed to drag on a little bit and I wasn’t completely satisfied but I’m glad I kept going to the end. It was beautiful, it was heartbreaking and it had me racing to keep reading to know what was going to happen next!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Definitely worth the hype! As with every Maggie O’Farrell book, Hamnet is beautifully written and cuts you right to the core.

My thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting read set in the late 1500's, loosely based on Shakespeare, his wife and family. Whilst I have read Shakespeare plays over the years for English Literature and have seen some of them on the stage and on film, I have to admit that I didn't really know a lot about the man and his family. Maggie O'Farrell has woven a story about some scant facts that she knew about Shakespeare, his wife, children and other family members. Some names of family members have been changed and the story she admits is a result of her idle speculation, I don't think that this is a detraction at all from it. At the end of the day it's a story and not a non fiction book.

I enjoyed the story of Hamnet and the fact that I have learned a few things about the Shakespeare family that I wasn't aware of, told to the reader as a fictional portrayal has actually made this reader a little more intrigued about the facts surrounding the family. Life can be cruel and events can have devastating and long lasting effects on people. I found this a sad read and really empathised with Agnes and all she went through.

I couldn’t read this book, I had to stop reading after a few chapter just couldn’t get into it which is a shame as everyone seemed to love it 😩😩😩sorry not for me!!

I love everything Maggie O Farrell writes this also did not disappoint. I've ended up buying my own copy and recommending it to friends and family too

Beautifully written, emotional and raw, Maggie O'Farrell weaves together the story of a simple marriage, a woman and her children living a domesticated life in the countryside and the devastating effects of grief. You may know the man behind the play, but this is a different kind of tale all together.

As the title suggests, this is the story of Hamnet, the son of William Shakespeare. However, O'Farrell takes the decision to never mention the bard by name. Throughout the story, as we revisits his childhood and introduction to wife Agnes, he is simply referred to as 'the tutor' or 'the boy', later 'the father' and 'husband'. By doing so she is removing the celebrity from the story, and therefore his potential to overshadow this quiet family life he leaves behind. This book isn't about him.

From the first time we meet Agnes, you can see she is unique, in awe of nature and her surroundings. She wants the simple life, to raise her children under the shades of trees and in the company of the forest creatures. In so many ways she is a complete opposite of her husband - a man who is desperately trying to escape his awful childhood and make a name for himself in the capital. It's a risk for Agnes to marry him, and she knows it, yet she still sees herself loving this man and the family they will create.

The plot is slow, pondering the domestic life the family leads in the build up to its inevitable breakdown. We get rich descriptions of the wildlife, the animals and farming that surround them and the gardens and house they live in. Everything builds on this simple life, this simple family. We see these children enter the world, through their mother's eyes and the work she put in to raising them. It's this journey we go that makes the outcome so devastating. The portrayal of grief, how it opens chasms in families, how it can tear them apart, and how it affects everyone differently, is so eloquently portrayed. The scenes with Agnes in the graveyard and the one in the playhouse in particular stand out to me as especially haunting.

A wonderful read that took me a couple of false starts, due to the slow pace, to really get into. However I'm so glad I persevered. If you like character driven historical fiction, I cannot recommend this highly enough.

A great book. Am imagining off the life is Shakespeare. Thought it was very clever how he was never mentioned by name.

Another incredible book by one of my favourite authors. The plot is so beautiful and masterfully written.

I love stories of sidelined characters throughout history. Alison Weir has created magic by telling the stories of Henry the 8ths wives and Maggie O'Farrell has created alchemy with her story about William Shakespeare's son Hamnet.

Part of the brilliance about Hamnet is that we don't really know a lot about Shakespeare beyond his plays. This gives O'Farrell great scope in creating a story using what little we do know to paint this brilliant tapestry of Shakespeare's life.

O'Farrell took me to Shakespearean England. I was there through the tribulations of Shakespeare branching out. I witnessed his wedding and the birth of his children. I wept along with characters. That is the power of Hamnet.

It is a brilliant book and worthy of all the prizes and accolades bestowed upon it.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell is available now.

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A beautiful, haunting, touching novel, exploring death, life and everything in between, but especially the terrible grief of parents who have lost a child. Using Shakespeare and his wife, who are never actually identified, as the entrance for this exploration is a wonderfully realised idea and O'Farrell's beautiful prose makes the whole stand out.

If I was already a fan of Maggie O'Farrell before, this new book definitely blew my mind. It is so emotional and yet historically accurate, with so many feelings but no anachronism or approximation. It's just perfect.

Talking about William Shakespeare through the death of his young son is a unique approach on the Bard and immediately takes us back to the 16e century - a time of plague and of the first steps of theatre, both wretched and flamboyant.

Beautifully heartbreaking.

This is a fictional story of a 16 century historical family, William Shakespeare, his wife Ann Hathaway , their children and in particular Hamnet, a son who died at a very young age. As has happened with the television series The Crown, and many other past and present series and books, readers will perceive imagined situations in a fictional story as potentially accurate events notwithstanding the story is characterised as fiction. When research has resulted in a book of this standard and high quality it is impossible not to be drawn into the ambience of 16 century life and become an active participant in the life and times of our greatest writer. The author has surpassed herself in the blending of fact and fiction, imagination and sensitivity to deliver a five star read on every level. Perhaps allowing the reader to believe this could easily be fact is a demonstration of the real talent of storytelling a brilliant writer can achieve. Many thanks to publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a story that I sort of knew, but seeing it play out was really interesting to me and I particularly enjoyed the timeline changes and the changes in perspectives.

William Shakespeare had a son Hamnet and this novel is loosely based on him. Agnes meets the man she is destined to marry and they have 3 children but she always knew she was openly supposed to have 2. Twins born, a boy and a girl and so very close until the boy dies. How will they all move on from this loss?
A beautifully written novel full of hope and promise, love and pain. Enjoyed it very much.

Thank you so much for granting my wish! I have been desperate to read this for so long and it did not disappoint. I think I'll have to write a more in-depth review soon once I've processed my thoughts properly!

Why Shakespeare? In Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet” the author uses her considerable talent for mapping the emotional terrain and intimate relationships of her contemporary characters over a long period of time to write a historical novel about the plague-ridden reality of late 16th century England and the death of Shakespeare’s adolescent son Hamnet. Four years after the boy’s death the Bard wrote ‘Hamlet’, a name that was used interchangeably with Hamnet at the time. Given we know only a slender amount about Shakespeare’s life and he wrote nothing of his personal grief, it’s irresistible to speculate on what motivated him to immortalize his son’s name in a play which went on to be one of the most quoted literary works in the English language. However, rather than portray Shakespeare’s thoughts and feelings, O’Farrell instead focuses on the lives of his family: Shakespeare and Agnes’ hastily arranged marriage, the illness of Hamnet’s twin sister Judith, Hamnet’s sudden death and the devastating grief which followed. This is powerfully rendered, beautifully written with evocative historical details and I enjoyed it immensely but…

I felt like something was lacking. A problem might be in my expectations for this novel which has been much-hyped and lauded. It’s been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, tipped for the Booker and a prominent review ended by simply stating “this is a work that ought to win prizes.” Publicity for the book describes it as “the heart-stopping story behind Shakespeare’s most famous play.” But the novel tells us very little about Shakespeare’s motivation or influence for writing the play beyond what I’ve already described. So I feel that if O’Farrell uses this as a premise her fiction needs to converse with and expand our understanding of Shakespeare’s writing and his literary stature by imaginatively inhabiting his reality. However, Shakespeare is very much a periphery character who is emotionally and physically absent from his family in Stratford while he pursues his dramatic work in London. Of course, this was no doubt the reality. But if we’re not going to get Shakespeare’s perspective or a feeling for the man himself why include him as a character or focus on this central storyline?

Instead, O’Farrell inventively and movingly imagines the life of Agnes as someone with healing powers and quasi-psychic abilities who frequently gathers flowers and herbs to concoct healing mixtures for many of the locals. It’s remarked that “Agnes is of another world. She does not quite belong here.” She’s an entirely-convincing, fully rounded character who is strong and full of heart. I found it very touching how she’s hampered with feelings of guilt about her son’s fate even though she couldn’t have predicted the outcome of his illness or prevented his death. Also, her ambivalent feelings about her husband are a poignant and realistic depiction of a relationship. She’ll never want to see him again one moment and then another moment will feel achingly close to him. She also recognizes that his family and life in Stratford could never be enough for him: “She can tell, even through her dazed exhaustion, even before she can take his hand, that he has found it, he is fitting it, he is inhabiting it - that life he was meant to live, that work he was intended to do.” All of this detail and characterization is excellent but it could be about any family with an absent husband/father.

Shakespeare looms large in our esteem as probably the greatest writer in Western literature and there’s a prolific amount of biographical literature based on relatively few facts making the Bard seem more mythical than historical. Therefore, O’Farrell’s novel feels somewhat like fanfiction that imaginatively and powerfully builds a domestic universe out of the slenderly-known central players in his life. It makes an important statement by naming these figures and conspicuously not naming Shakespeare at all in the novel – he’s only ever referred to by his status as either “the husband”, “the tutor” or “the father”. Perhaps it is partly O’Farrell’s purpose in writing this book to state that the man was merely mortal and his reality was probably as ordinary as his stark and plain writing room that we get a glimpse of late in the novel. That’s perfectly fine. But…

While reading this novel I kept thinking of “Lincoln in the Bardo” and how much Saunders dynamically builds on both our historical and imagined understanding of Abraham Lincoln as a legendary political figure from American history. As with any prominent figure, it shows how he had to balance his personal reality with his public reputation. But “Hamnet” shows us almost nothing about Shakespeare’s conflict except why he’s almost entirely absented himself from family life: “He sees how he may become mired in Stratford forever, a creature with its leg in the jaws of an iron trap, with his father next door, and his son, cold and decaying, beneath the churchyard sod.” But even before Hamnet’s death he rarely visited his family. A writer who feels like they can’t simultaneously maintain a family and professional life is an interesting subject, but his feelings on this aren’t explored either. The most moving portrait of Shakespeare in this novel comes when he tries to engage Agnes in talking about the flora she gathers rather than discussing their son’s death and Agnes resolutely ignores him. Otherwise, I was left as surprised and confused as Agnes about why Shakespeare named his play after his son – other than a fairly obvious psychological interpretation for his motivations. This left me feeling somewhat deflated at the end of the novel.

Given our current circumstances, I also have to note the bizarre coincidence that this novel focuses so much on the effects of a pandemic. It describes in detail the symptoms the plague has on the body and the way measures were taken to try to contain the illness. There are references to theatres needing to periodically close because of it. There’s also an imaginative and impressive section which describes the journey of the illness and how is spreads through fleas from a young sailor to a glass craftsman and how it finally comes to infect a member of Shakespeare’s family. It’s a strange experience reading a novel whose central subject matter becomes surprisingly topical. I also want to stress how much I enjoyed this excellent novel and I’m not surprised it has many enthusiastic fans, but I just wasn’t as impressed as some other readers have been.

I absolutely loved this book! I think a review might be superfluous after all the awards and accolades that have been given by other more illustrious reviewers, but I will add my standing ovation to theirs. It is a wonderfully inventive and beautifully imagined book about Shakespeare's everyday life. Although the man himself rarely appears, he is at the heart of everything. We mostly see the world through the eyes of his wife, Agnes, whose otherness is woven through the story to create a sense of ethereal mystery, and later, heartfelt misery on the death of the title character. It is unusually structured to move in and out of the events of the story seamlessly, but retains a stong narrative that engages and grips the reader. A masterful novel to rank alongside some of her other innovative work I have read.