There’s little known about Shakespeares life and this allows Maggie O’Farrell free reign to create a highly enjoyable historical novel. Shakespeare, not mentioned by name, is not centre stage in this novel, that honour is given to his wife Agnes (who we know as Anne Hathaway) and her three children. Agnes is a free spirit, an outsider with a character steeped in folklore, helping those in the village with her potions (like her mother before her). The novel starts with their daughter Judith sick with the plague, her twin brother Hamnet desperate to find help. We move seamlessly between time periods learning about Agnes’s childhood and meeting her future husband the Latin Tutor (Shakespeare). The descriptions of the time and place are vivid and take you back to the 16th century. Themes from Shakespearian plays are subtly blended into the novel. Although historical the novel doesn’t choose to confuse with ye olde language, and is all the better for that.
We are all too aware how diseases/virus can spread around the globe quickly in our modern age. A fascinating sub-section details the path of the plague which takes us from Venice to a house near Stratford to Judith.

A book to immerse yourself in - highly recommended.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43890641-hamnet

Just like there is a Hamlet and a Hamnet, I feel there are two Hamnets: the novel that Maggie O’Farrell actually wrote, and the story that has been hyped to the back of beyond since its publication was first announced back in 2019. This makes it a difficult novel to review, because, if I’d just come across this book as ‘the next Maggie O’Farrell’, I think I’d have taken it more to my heart than I actually did. I understand why a publisher would want to try and push an author like O’Farrell to the next level; having utterly adored her last two books, her novel This Must Be The Place and her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, I was genuinely shocked to discover that, for example, she’s never been longlisted for the Women’s Prize before. I am a long-time admirer of O’Farrell’s understated but beautiful, observational prose, and I have read everything she’s ever written. Nevertheless – and perhaps because, unlike readers discovering her for the first time, I already know how good O’Farrell can be – I felt underwhelmed by Hamnet.

Hamnet is billed as telling the untold story of Shakespeare’s son, who died when he was only eleven years old, but I found this misleading in two ways. Firstly, I feel like it’s common knowledge that Shakespeare had a son who died young. Secondly, the book is really about Shakespeare’s wife, here called Agnes (Anne Hathaway was named as ‘Agnes’ in her father’s will – and I think it’s a clever choice by O’Farrell to use this name, giving herself some distance between the historical figure and her own creation). And unfortunately, I found that Agnes often fell into some familiar stereotypes, despite some transcendent moments, such as the scene when she is unable to wrap her son in his winding sheet, because it means she will never see his face again. I find historical novels that seek to tear down a man’s reputation as if that’s the only way to give the women in his life some agency intensely irritating – this was one of the reasons why I struggled with Madeline Miller’s Circe, because I didn’t like the way it treated Odysseus. Hamnet does not exactly do this. Shakespeare, never named in the text, is portrayed as a man who deeply loves his wife and children despite his long absences from home. However, there’s still a tendency to write Agnes into the story by writing him out, and I would have preferred a novel that felt more equally split between the two parents.

O’Farrell brings early modern England wonderfully to life in very few words. The setting of the story is completely captivating. However, I didn’t feel that Hamnet achieved the same kind of depth in its characterisation. I’ve already suggested that Agnes feels a little stale; Hamnet himself, alongside his siblings, never became truly real to me. For this reason, the novel never broke my heart in the way it set out to do. O’Farrell writes so well about grief, but I found myself admiring her writing from afar rather than grieving with the characters. Rather than being glued to this book, I kept on thinking back to a different novel that enthralled me as a teenager, Susan Cooper’s King of Shadows. The two books are not exactly the same. Cooper tells the story of a young actor, Nat, who is thrown back in time to Elizabethan England and ends up as part of Shakespeare’s company. However, King of Shadows also portrays Shakespeare as a grieving father, forging a special connection with Nat, who is a fatherless boy – and it was the sharpness of the emotion in that book that I found myself craving.

Hamnet is absolutely worth reading, especially if you haven’t read O’Farrell before. However, I don’t think it’s the ‘novel of her career’ [© publicity]. Selfishly, I’d hope that’s a novel she’s not yet written! But if we’re confined to her existing corpus, then I’d say that This Must Be The Place sees her writing at the height of her powers; that The Hand That First Held Mine is genuinely moving in a way that for me, this novel was not; and that After You’d Gone might not be the most accomplished of her books, but it remains an astonishing debut. But as I say, I still feel confident that the best is yet to come. 3.5 stars.

I was so excited when I noticed last week that NetGalley had made this book available for request again. I almost had a party when my wish was granted and I got the chance to read one of my most anticipated books of the year. What an absolute privilege it has been to read this incredible story. It is truly the best book Maggie O’Farrell has ever written and I’m a huge fan, having loved her previous novels, especially The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. The scary part is now trying to do this incredible work justice in my review.

Despite his place in literature as our most famous playwright, not a lot is known about Shakespeare’s life with his wife and children. Until reading this, and despite doing a module in Renaissance Literature at university, my only knowledge was of a wife called Anne Hathaway. Any other knowledge has rather embarrassingly been gleaned from Upstart Crow, which depicts his eldest daughter Susannah as an intelligent, outspoken and boy crazy teenager. I also remember a visit to Anne Hathaway’s home many years ago and being shown the outside of a picture perfect cottage. This was Hewlands where Anne was born, and after her marriage, the home of her brother Bartholomew. There has always been this hole in my knowledge, and when watching the totally inaccurate Shakespeare in Love I do remember wondering whatever happened to his wife. Did he love her and if so, how did he spend so much time away from her and their family? Also, with his success down in London, what did Anne do with her life? I wondered whether she was weighed down with the care of children, as well as her elderly in-laws with whom they lived.

For the author it was a different absence that became her way into the story. She had always wondered why the Black Death or ‘pestilence’ never featured in any of Shakespeare’s works. It’s absence seemed odd, considering that, in this time period, it killed large swathes of people. From 1575 in Venice over 50,000 people died as a result of plague over two years, thought to be caused by troop movements associated with The Thirty Years War. The beautiful cathedral Santa Maria Della Salute was built after a third of the population was wiped out in a return of the plague in 1630. The city still celebrates the Festival of the Redeemer today as a thank you that the city and some of its residents survived these pandemics. In England in 1563 the plague killed 20,000 people in London alone. Historical sources cite the plague as cause of death to extended members of Shakespeare’s family and possibly his sisters. His work was also affected, with all London playhouses closed down in 1593, 1603 and 1608. However, the biggest loss of all was his only son Hamnet, who is thought to have contracted the disease and died, aged 11, in 1596. O’Farrell takes these facts as the bare bones and fleshes out a more human story, weaving the life of a boy and his family with empathy, poetry and a touch of magic.

One of my favourite passages of the book focuses on the transmission of this horrific disease via some fleas and the beautiful millefiore glass beads crafted on the Venetian island of Murano. It takes accident, upon chance, and coincidence to carry the deadly disease all the way back to Stratford. A glassmaker burns his hand, so someone else packs his beads into some soft rags he finds lying around, instead of their usual packaging. A merchant ship bound for England has docked and these beads must be on it. A cabin boy from the ship searches Venice for cats to combat rats on board, when he is diverted by a monkey in a waistcoat. The monkey clings to his hair and, much to the boy’s delight, doesn’t want to let go, until his keeper roughly pulls him away. Left behind are a few fleas, some of which make their way onto new hosts in the shape of the ship’s cats. A crew member who tends to sleep with cats in his cabin doesn’t report for duty and is found to have a fever and the telltale ‘buboes’ or swelling of the lymph glands. These swellings turn black and the smell of the dead man is so repugnant that other crew members are relieved to heave him overboard for burial. He isn’t the last. Only five crew members remain as the ship docks in London and one box of beads from Murano makes its way to a Stratford dressmaker, where a customer is determined that only Murano glass beading would do for her new dress. The dressmakers assistant unpacks the beads from their ragged packaging and as she does a flea jumps from the fabric to its new host. The dressmaker’s assistant is Judith Shakespeare, Hamnet’s twin sister. This is typical of the author’s signature style of layering description to create depth and its effect is like an assault on the senses. I can smell the sweat of the glassmaker, feel the fur of the monkey, hear the creak of the boats in the canals and the shouts in the market, and feel the swell of the waves and ruts in the road as the package takes its journey, delivering both beauty and death at the same time.

In one timeline Judith and then Hamnet succumb to the plague, while unwittingly the family go about their usual day. There is a clever nod to the cross dressing in Shakespeare’s comedies here in the likeness of the twins, but this is anything but funny, it’s a disguise to cheat death. As the family slowly discover what fate has in store, our timeline jumps into the past following Agnes and Hamnet’s father. Although she is more widely known as Anne, she was recorded in official records as Agnes so the author chose to stick with that name. The author always refers to him as the tutor, the husband or the father and never by name. The absence of his name creates a sense of two people; the London’s celebrity playwright and the family man. We start to see what an extraordinary woman Agnes is in her own right. The object of gossip in town, people say the daughter at Hewlands is a very singular character. She has a friend who is a priest, she has her own hawk and can charm bees. In truth she knows a lot of old country ways such as foraging, hawking and bee keeping as well as what plants to grow for household ailments. She often roams barefoot in the forest and her stepmother Joan despaired of her a long time ago. In fact, she has suffered years of psychological abuse at the hands of her stepmother who is jealous of the love her husband held for his late wife. When Agnes meets her brother’s Latin tutor, she uses her method of reading people and pinches the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. Here she sees depths and universes within, that his surface youth and inexperience didn’t even hint at. It is this promise, these unseen layers, that she falls in love with. For his part, it is her difference he finds intoxicating. He realises that he will never see another woman who walks barefoot, with lose hair and a hawk on her arm. However much they accept each other, will their families accept their choice and will those untapped depths come between them?

I enjoyed the way these two timelines intersected, each informing the other and adding layers of understanding. How both families assimilated and worked together over time was really interesting. In each generation sibling relationships were particularly important, with their rivalries, but also their unspoken trusts and understandings. The idea of ‘doubling’ and disguise around siblings, especially where there are different genders such as Judith and Hamnet, makes us think again about a play like Twelfth Night. Disguise allows women to do things they would normally be excluded from and I enjoyed the industriousness of women in the novel. This wasn’t just based around domestic matters but planning and running businesses. Agnes grows medicinal plants and creates cures, with people often knocking on the door to be seen. As a country girl I also liked the depiction of her relationship with the land. When I stand on the bank of the River Trent, I feel an urge to go barefoot and ground myself. I was born there, so when I moved next to the river recently grounding and feeling the earth felt so powerful. Agnes is the same with the land at Hewlands, particularly the woods, and she chooses to give birth there to Susannah. Agnes feels cradled by the earth, it protects, cures and grounds her. She also has great ‘countrycraft’ such as being able to control bees - something I’ve seen my own father do with a swarm- there’s a practicality but also a mysticism to these abilities.

Underpinning all of this, I am in love with Maggie O’Farrell’s flow. It’s a hard book to put down because it reads like one long poem to love, family, and home. Then there is the tension that comes when a member of this family follows their dream and is taken away from that unit. How does a father balance his roles as lover, son, father and still follow his dreams? Especially when those dreams are so big. When he gets that balance wrong will he be forgiven, and will he be able to forgive himself? The book is full of contrasts, from passages so vibrant and full of life, to the devastating silence of Hamnet’s loss. From birth scenes to death scenes. Wild country lanes and the leafy woods compared with the noise and enclosure of town. The routine of daily family life as opposed to a chaotic life in the theatres of London. All of these contrasts exist within one family, and no matter what we know about our most famous and celebrated playwright, this is about family. Finally, the author’s depiction of grief is so moving. Whether quiet and contained, or expressed loudly, we never doubt its devastating power. We never overlook the boy-shaped hole in the life of this family. Whether our response to grief is to run from it, distract ourselves from it or deny it, eventually we do have to go through it. In the life of this couple, will their grief be expressed differently and if so, can they ever make their way back to each other? This is a simply stunning piece of work. Moving, haunting and ultimately unforgettable.

Hamnet is a novel fictionalising the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet to look at what happens to a family already stretched between Stratford-upon-Avon and London. One day in 1596, a girl falls ill, and her twin brother searches for help. Their mother is out of the house and their father in London, where he makes his living as a playwright. Soon, one of the twins will be dead of the plague, a death that resonates across the family and through time due to the name connection with the famous play.

The novel moves between the 'present' narrative of Hamnet's last days and the aftermath of his death, and the past, the meeting of a tutor and a woman with a kestrel who will marry and give life to Hamnet and his sisters. The writing style is poetic and readable, making the novel flow far more easily than a lot of historical fiction, and getting across the sense of fate and prescience that Agnes in particular believes in. O'Farrell paints a vivid picture of Agnes, Shakespeare's wife (there's a note at the end about why she chose to use this name for her rather than the more well known Anne) and Hamnet's mother, not only her quirks but also how she deals with the grief and with the constant separation from her husband, who she knew needed to go to London.

There are plenty of fictionalised versions of Shakespeare, but this one, which focuses more on his family and on a kind of inevitability that wouldn't be out of place in his plays, is on the more engaging end of the scale, for not trying to answer questions about his life as much as paint a story of loss and a strained relationship. The obvious links with the plague and the present day makes these a strangely timely novel in some ways, but hopefully that won't be all it'll be read for.

This is an extremely engrossing piece of historical fiction about William Shakespear's family life, particularly with his wife and children.  Although the title of this book refers to his son who died at a very young age, I found this to be more of a story about his wife.  In this book 'Agnes' is portrayed as an extremely unusual woman with preternatural (verging on supernatural) gifts, and she is an absolutely fantastic character.  This is a beautiful, melancholy story about family life and even if readers are not fans of Shakespeare it really doesn't matter as his name is never actually mentioned.  A truly wonderful book, not to be missed.

I was unsure what to expect from this book, but was exceptionally pleased and honoured to receive this ARC. My opinion wow what a fantastic read so much so I read it in 3 days whilst still working 10 hours a day this week. Although the author makes it clear this is her version of events incorporating true life characters I found the storyline so believable that I had to remind myself this is a fiction book and not totally a true story.
As a visitor to Stratford upon Avon I could relate to the houses described and so in my minds eye I could see it all.
This is a fantastic read and I heartily recommend this book to everyone who enjoys a brilliant book and wants a few hours to totally forget about the times we are currently living in.

Hamnet is heartbreakingly beautiful. I will be thinking about this novel for a very long time.

Hamnet tells the story of Shakespeare's only son, who died age eleven of unknown causes. It flows between voices and timelines effortlessly, detailing the early relationship of Hamnet's parents, the dynamics of his family life, and, once it builds to its devastating climax, the heart-wrenching impact of his death.

If a reader knows what's going to happen before a story begins, there's a danger the emotional impact can be dampened, but O'Farrell paints a vivid, heartbreaking picture of a family in grief. She explores the unimaginable devastation of losing a child, and the different forms grief can take. This novel brought me to tears for chapters. It explores the wonder and cruelty of life, the inconstancy of relationships and the effect our lives have on others.

The backdrop of plague, the ease and yet also complexity, with which it is transmitted, is particularly poignant in our current times. The playhouses close, public gatherings are banned in London, and Shakespeare returns to Stratford to spend weeks and months with his family. The plague gives them time together, yet it also takes so much. Shakespeare doesn't explore the plague in any of his plays, and O'Farrell uses its striking absence to weave her imagining of Shakespeare and his family's life.

The narrative switches between Hamnet, his siblings Judith and Susanna, his mother Agnes, his grandmother Mary and his unnamed father. For, while he is crucial to the narrative's every twist and turn, Shakespeare is referred to only as 'the tutor', 'the father' or 'the glovemaker's son'. Yet he still comes vibrantly to life. Lost in the world of his narratives, driven by love and emotion, it is an image of a mysterious historical figure that feels realistic and influenced by the few facts we do know about his life.

Agnes was my favourite character. I loved the surreal, other-wordly sphere she occupied, her knowledge and use of herbal remedies, and the fierceness of her love, which brings both rapture and despair.

Hamnet is superbly written, with brilliant historical details and complicated characters. It is an imagining of how one of Shakespeare's greatest works came into being and has left me desperate to read the play once more.

'And there, by the fire, held in the arms of his mother, in the room in which he learnt to crawl, to eat, to walk, to speak, Hamnet takes his last breath.
He draws it in, he lets it out.
Then there is silence, stillness. Nothing more.'

In the year that we get the last volume of Hilary Mantel's trilogy, I asked myself when I approached this new novel by Maggie O'Farrell: 'is there room for another historical novel set in the 16th century, a fictionalised account of a real historical character, and especially another one written in the present tense?' I have to admit I fully expected to stumble across a sentence starting 'he, Cromwell...' (actually, there are a couple of similar examples where we get a line such as: 'She sees how she, Agnes, must remain calm'). Hmm, I thought, is this just Mantel-lite? And whilst it does take a little time, for anyone familiar with the 'other' books, as it were, to stop hearing that voice in your head as you read, suddenly, about half way through, all I could hear were the characters conjured up by O'Farrell. And I was hooked.

How did Shakespeare come to write a play called 'Hamlet', a name inter-changeable with that of his dead son Hamnet? And how did the women in his life - his wife, commonly known as Anne but probably actually called Agnes, and his daughters Susanna and Judith (Hamnet's twin sister) - cope with this family tragedy? From these questions, O'Farrell weaves a compelling and profoundly moving study of family life, of loss and profound grief. The character of Agnes is central to the book, a slightly mystical character, perhaps with strange powers of possible witchcraft, but a loving mother and wife having to cope with raising a family whilst her husband tries to build a career in London. The household, and the various other family members, are wonderfully brought to life, and O'Farrell possesses a genuine ability to highlight details, moments of time, which are so imbued with meaning and beauty. The prose is sublime:

'And now the moment has arrived. Agnes conjugates it: he is going, he will be gone, he will go.'

or:

'The hedgerows are constellations, studded with fire-red hips.'

As the time-frame shifts, we move from the present, and the run up to the death of Hamnet, to the past, and the courtship and early years of marriage of 'the husband' (note, he is never named in the book) and Agnes. And then we move forward in time, to the years after the child's death, and the performance of a new play in London called 'Hamlet'.

This is a genuinely wonderful book. For something to so completely win me over after my initial reservations tells me so. I have not ready any of Maggie O'Farrell's previous works, so I am not in a position to say that this foray by her into historical fiction is representative of her work or not. What it is, however, is a genuinely moving and lyrical meditation on grief, where the sense of loss is palpable but never overwrought. And in Agnes we have a wonderfully human central character. It may have its basis in fact or not, but this is fiction, and it is a triumph.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

I was so looking forward to reading this book as I had heard so much about it.

But after finishing all I could think was that it was OK.

Reasonably well written, a few lovely turns of phrase, but overall way too thin for such a subject.

For me the characters just didn't ever become strong enough to pull me through and the read was slow and at times I just wanted to put it down.

I was happy enough to read and finish it but it didn't excite me.

Maggie O’Farrell is an author I’ve always enjoyed reading but I think Hamnet will be one of my favourites. In 1596 Hamnet/Hamlet (names are interchangeable) the son of William Shakespeare died, cause unknown. This captivating story takes us backwards and forwards from 1580 to 1599 to the writing of Hamlet. In 1580 our would be actor and playwright is transfixed by his first sight of Agnes (Anne) Hathaway as he tries without great success to tutor her reluctant stepbrothers. We get a glimpse of his life at home with his tempestuous and violent father John who is a glove maker, mother Mary and sister Eliza. We watch as love grows between William and Agnes who has a Cinderella life with her harsh stepmother Joan, who is contemptuous of Agnes’ skills with herbs and magical powers. We are invited to their wedding and glimpse their family life. You hold your breath as the events unfold that lead to Hamnet’s death and it’s impact upon them and we are in the audience at the premier of the play in his name.

Where to start? This is so well written and in a style appropriate to the century. It’s lively, vivid and captures late Elizabethan times so well that you feel you have been transported back. You are dazzled by the sights, you smell the pungent smells and are a witness to the harsh and hard reality of the times. The images are so colourful as are the characters. Agnes is wonderful, William is an enigma but Agnes understands him well, Hamnet is a clever dreamer and so close to twin sister Judith they are halves of a whole. This wonderful storyline includes magical beliefs, myths and superstitions of the time. It’s an emotional ride too as there’s hatred, selfishness, bitterness, fear, anger, agony and overwhelming sadness but also deep love. You come to understand how William ends up in London and several days journey from his family and how he gets drawn into writing and the world of theatre. The ending is especially affecting and is a very powerful end to a tale you feel connected to.

Overall, this book is stunningly beautiful. I love this period and Shakespeare’s plays (some more than others!) and was lucky enough last summer to see a production of Hamlet at the Rose Theatre in York, a replica of an Elizabethan playhouse, so I guess Maggie O’Farrell already ‘had me’!! However, it doesn’t matter if you are not a fan of the work of the Bard because this is storytelling at its best. Highly recommended and an easy five stars!!

Thanks to NetGalley and especially to Headline Group for the privilege of the ARC.

I loved Maggie O'Farrell's new novel Hamnet as much as I thought I would.

The story is an elegant portrayal of Agnes Hathaway's marriage to William Shakespeare, told in jumpcut segments between the couple's courtship, early marriage, birth of children and finally the performance of the play Hamlet after the death of their beloved son.

William takes a back seat to Agnes during the whole book, being variously referred to as "the glover's son", "the Latin tutor" and other descriptions rather than by name and he is largely absent in London for half the book. Agnes is vividly portrayed as a bright and free-spirited woman who has deep roots in the countryside and who is in charge of her own destiny. There's a little bit of magical thinking where Agnes senses her future husband's potential with her clairvoyant ability and makes predictions, although they aren't always accurate. The reader knows that eventually the beautiful boy Hamnet will die, but the death doesn't occur until quite a long way through the book, so we really feel like we know the family before tragedy strikes.

The book has already been nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020 Long List and I hope it does well.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

2.5 rounded up

Hamnet tells the story of Shakespeare's son of the same name who died (most likely) of bubonic plague aged 11 in 1596. The narrative mostly follows Hamnet's mother, Agnes (Anne Hathaway - Agnes is thought to be her real name according to her father's will), and her life married to the bard.

Speaking as someone who a) doesn't read much historical fiction and, b) isn't a huge fan of it, I have to say that I found this an accessible and readable novel however it wasn't without its issues. At times it was a bit of a slow burn and I'd have liked a bit more of a sense of place - beyond the vivid descriptions of plague-ridden characters the writing felt a bit lacking in this area. The main problem I had with the book though was that the only character which felt somewhat fleshed out was Agnes, everyone else felt pretty two-dimensional - particularly Hamnet himself. I think this was O'Farrell's intention with regard to Hamnet's father, but it still let the novel down in my view.

A quibble that will likely be an ARC-exclusive issue but the Kindle formatting made it a bit of a struggle at times to work out where the alternate timelines began and ended, but overall this is a solid retelling of Hamlet's life and the subsequent play named after him which I think fans of historical fiction will enjoy.

It pains me to say I did not love this book.
O'Farrell comes with high expectations.
I found it a bit flat... getting no sense of anyone other than Agnes until a good way through the book.
In fact it was only when Hammer died,I finally got into it.
The constant referencing someone by their relationship to another,rather than their name was a little confusing too.