"Inspired by Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, this imagined story, earthy, otherworldly and emotional, is simply and beautifully glorious."
Glorious, simply and beautifully glorious! Inspired by Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, this is the imagined story behind the writing of Hamlet, which was written between 1599 and 1601. Hamnet and Hamlet were apparently “entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries”. Maggie O’Farrell says she wanted to write this story for over thirty years. “What did it mean for a father to name a tragic hero after his ( ) son. What was this unusual act telling us?” The cover design is beautiful, it called to me. On opening, I slipped into and fell in love with this tale. Hamnet has an almost otherworldly feel, and yet is as earthy and believable as can be. Two time frames sit side by side, Hamnet becoming ill in 1596, and then the earlier story of Shakespeare and Agnes meeting and falling in love. The descriptions became clear bright images in my mind. I could feel the words, they echoed deep inside me, creating pools of emotion. I cried on finishing, all the feelings that Hamnet created slipped out of me and trickled down my cheeks. I adore Hamnet, it now sits on my list of favourite books, and will be one that I reread each year. Chosen as a Book of the Month, LoveReading Star Book, and Liz Pick of the Month.
| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER Now a major motion picture starring ACADEMY AWARD¬ winner Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn, directed by Chloé Zhao.
The acclaimed author of the Reese's Book Club pick The Marriage Portrait delivers a deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the years leading up to the production of his great play Hamlet.
"Miraculous. . . . Brilliant. . . . A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer-or curse. . . . A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death." -Ron Charles, The Washington Post
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.
Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down-a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.
Hamnet features in the following genres: Historical Fiction, Books of the Month, Family Drama, General Fiction, Liz Robinson's Picks of the Month, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Star Books, Fiction, Recommendations
Hamnet is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook
Hamnet was written by Maggie O'Farrell and published by Knopf an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Hamnet has 305 pages
