Reviews

Hamnet & Judith by Maggie O'Farrell

Only show reviews with written explanations

ambergamgee's review against another edition

4.0

This book was a bit of a slog for me for much of it, and I almost quit it several times. I ended up listening to it at 2x speed (on audio). Right in the final 15-20 minutes of the book, it soared up to 4 stars for me. This isn’t a huge spoiler since the death of Hamnet/Hamlet is known going in, but the mother watching Hamnet come back to life on stage just killed me. The beauty and power of art and storytelling.
It’s a bit slow and there are unnecessary details filling too much space. The end made it worth it to me, but if you don’t already enjoy slow, long books I wouldn’t recommend it.
Side rant I wanted to get off my chest lol. There were 2 things I saw in reviews here I wanted to mention. 1. Criticism that the mother couldn’t possibly know she was pregnant a month in, the persons reasoning being that modern pregnancy tests don’t even reliably show at a month in. This is nitpicking a strangers random review, but it annoyed me. At a month post insemination is actually “6 weeks pregnant” technically. A mother can definitely know. I knew probably 2-3 weeks post insemination with my 2nd son. A woman who is in tune with their body, and/or has a very regular cycle, and has recently been pregnant, can certainly know. It’s a dumb reason to hate on a book. 2. More than one review criticized the mother’s feelings after Hamnet dies. Wow, the lack of empathy...astounding. The character says things like “if only...” and “I should have...” and reviewers said snarky things like “oh, like she’s supposed to be psychic? She’s supposed to stop the plague?