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A review by writtenontheflyleaves
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell π§€
ππππ
π The plot: Stratford, 1596. An 11-year-old boy is desperately trying to find help for his sister, who has fallen ill. His mother is out of reach on the edge of town, his father even further away in London. No one knows yet that this boy will not survive the week - or that three years later, his father will give his name to one of the most famous plays ever written.
Hamnet is a feat of imagination from start to finish. It's vivid, it's moving. It's wildly overwritten at times - a hand movement or journey from room to room might take a full page - but it does something I think is really hard to do: it brings a famous person from history fully to life. Shakespeare is a character we know little about while having a huge idea of him in our collective consciousness, and O'Farrell writes him as just a man. A son, a husband, a father. A Latin tutor. Someone real, who you can feel for.
The result is a book that feels like a look into history with a lower-case "h". O'Farrell's not so much interested in the origins of Hamlet the play or in Shakespeare's artistic genius, but in the profound grief its name suggests for Hamnet the boy, and in helping her reader live that loss alongside his family. It's a novel that is both much bigger and much smaller than the question of how or why Shakespeare wrote, and I think that's why I liked it.
π¦ Read it for a complex portrait of a Midlands hero (big up Billy Shakes), deeply-felt characterisation, and if you want a nice big cry.
π« Avoid it if you find excessive description or a slow pace exhausting (I love a nice slow novel, but this tested me at points!) - also if you're not in a place to read about child death or pregnancy at the moment.
ππππ
π The plot: Stratford, 1596. An 11-year-old boy is desperately trying to find help for his sister, who has fallen ill. His mother is out of reach on the edge of town, his father even further away in London. No one knows yet that this boy will not survive the week - or that three years later, his father will give his name to one of the most famous plays ever written.
Hamnet is a feat of imagination from start to finish. It's vivid, it's moving. It's wildly overwritten at times - a hand movement or journey from room to room might take a full page - but it does something I think is really hard to do: it brings a famous person from history fully to life. Shakespeare is a character we know little about while having a huge idea of him in our collective consciousness, and O'Farrell writes him as just a man. A son, a husband, a father. A Latin tutor. Someone real, who you can feel for.
The result is a book that feels like a look into history with a lower-case "h". O'Farrell's not so much interested in the origins of Hamlet the play or in Shakespeare's artistic genius, but in the profound grief its name suggests for Hamnet the boy, and in helping her reader live that loss alongside his family. It's a novel that is both much bigger and much smaller than the question of how or why Shakespeare wrote, and I think that's why I liked it.
π¦ Read it for a complex portrait of a Midlands hero (big up Billy Shakes), deeply-felt characterisation, and if you want a nice big cry.
π« Avoid it if you find excessive description or a slow pace exhausting (I love a nice slow novel, but this tested me at points!) - also if you're not in a place to read about child death or pregnancy at the moment.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Grief, and Pregnancy
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail