Hamnet

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.