Hamnet (2020) - Maggie O'Farrell

 

“History gives you the facts, and fiction gives you the truth of the facts.” (Unattributed quote from Nancy Pearl in The Writer’s Library)

I bought Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet a couple of years ago but forgot I had a copy until reminded of it by the recent release of the book's movie version. That’s a problem I often have with e-books: “out of sight, out of mind.” But I suppose that’s story for a another time.

Hamnet impressed me in several ways, but what really surprised me most about O’Farrell’s construction of the novel is how secondary a character William Shakespeare turns out to be. Too, O’Farrell's central character, despite the novel’s title, is Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, not Hamnet, his son. And unless I missed a particular reference or two, even when the author or one of the book’s characters refer to Shakespeare, it is never by name, always only as “the husband” or “the tutor,” etc. It is Agnes who holds this family together in the roughest of times, and everything of consequence that happens in Hamnet either happens directly to her or the focus shifts to how she reacts to the event.

Hamnet is the story of a young man, eager to get away from his domineering and abusive father, who falls in love with a slightly older woman, herself living under the thumb of a stepmother whom she intensely dislikes. Despite the disapproval of both their families, the two find a way to marry, and they live for several years with the man’s parents while having three children of their own. Shakespeare, though, finally reaches the breaking point with his father and leaves for London - supposedly to extend the family glove business into that market. Instead, he finds work in the London theater, and only returns to Stratford three or four times a year. He is, in fact, in London in 1596 when his twins, Judith and Hamnet, fall ill with the plague. Hamnet would not survive. 

Hamnet is a touching story, but it is not nearly the tearjerker I expected it would be. I was far more impressed by how fully immersed I became in the late sixteenth century environment created by O’Farrell. The daily doings of the village, the relationships between the townspeople, the superstitions, and the general humanity of the characters all felt so authentic to me that I completely lost myself in that world for hours at a time. Hamnet is the kind of historical fiction I enjoy most, and it is my favorite read of 2026 to this point in the year.