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A review by angelayoung
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
5.0
Hamnet is a marvellous book, a jewel of a book: it causes great wonder, it is astounding, astonishing, excellent, magnificent and a great story.
I've been a Maggie O'Farrell fan since her first, After You'd Gone, but Hamnet captured me entirely and totally and without cease. I didn't want it to end (so of course I'll start again) but its subtle lyrical language, its tenderness, its absolute immersion in the late sixteenth-century (without once, even a smidge, smelling of the I've-done-my-research lamp), its characters who are real people (characters doesn't do them justice), its heartbreak and its joy, its wit and its empathy, its beauty and its dank darknesses are all woven so gloriously together it's as if this novel has always existed in its own time and now. Brava brava brava.
I'm about to open Hamnet at random to quote from it. Well, not quite at random, but randomly at one of the pages I turned down to reread and remember. Whatever page it turns out to be it will illustrate most if not all of what I've described above because it won't be able to help it (and if it doesn't win the Women's Prize this year I will be amazed - despite strong strong competition).
Ah. This is Agnes worrying about her husband's low spirits, his depression perhaps (although those words are never used). In case you don't know, Agnes's husband is William Shakespeare. We know this from the beginning, but his name is not once written into Hamnet. Agnes heals those who come to her with plants and herbs.
I've been a Maggie O'Farrell fan since her first, After You'd Gone, but Hamnet captured me entirely and totally and without cease. I didn't want it to end (so of course I'll start again) but its subtle lyrical language, its tenderness, its absolute immersion in the late sixteenth-century (without once, even a smidge, smelling of the I've-done-my-research lamp), its characters who are real people (characters doesn't do them justice), its heartbreak and its joy, its wit and its empathy, its beauty and its dank darknesses are all woven so gloriously together it's as if this novel has always existed in its own time and now. Brava brava brava.
I'm about to open Hamnet at random to quote from it. Well, not quite at random, but randomly at one of the pages I turned down to reread and remember. Whatever page it turns out to be it will illustrate most if not all of what I've described above because it won't be able to help it (and if it doesn't win the Women's Prize this year I will be amazed - despite strong strong competition).
Ah. This is Agnes worrying about her husband's low spirits, his depression perhaps (although those words are never used). In case you don't know, Agnes's husband is William Shakespeare. We know this from the beginning, but his name is not once written into Hamnet. Agnes heals those who come to her with plants and herbs.
She sees the cloud above him grow darker, gather its horrible rank strength. She wants to reach across the table then, to lay her hand on his arm. She wants to say, I am here. But what if her words are not enough? What if she is not enough of a salve for his nameless pain? For the first time in her life, she finds she does not know how to help someone. She does not know what to do. And, anyway, she cannot take his hand, not here, not at this table. There are plates and cups and candlesticks between them, and Eliza is standing now to clear the meat dish and Mary is trying to feed Susanna cuts of meat that are too large for her. There is so much to do in a family of this size, so much to see to, so many people needing so many different things. How easy is it, Agnes thinks, as she lifts the plates, to miss the pain and anguish of one person, if that person keeps quiet, if he keeps it all in, like a bottle stoppered too tightly, the pressure inside building and building, until - what ? Agnes doesn't know.