Maggie O’Farrell’s eighth novel, published in 2020, is a fictional account of William Shakespeare’s family, and the events leading up to and following the death of his son, Hamnet, at the age of eleven in 1596.
Although the novel takes its name from Hamnet, this is a story about a family, and how the relationships and individuals within that family are impacted by grief. The novel won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020, and it is undoubtedly the women in the Shakespeare family, namely Shakespeare’s wife Agnes and his younger daughter Judith (Hamnet’s twin), who have the most compelling voices in the story.
The events of the story begin in 1596 from the perspective of the young Hamnet who, upon realising that his twin sister has fallen seriously ill, and that the other members of his family are absent from home, rushes out to seek assistance from a physician. The focus of the story then shifts to the early meetings between the young Shakespeare and Agnes, and it becomes a beautifully detailed account of all the subsequent events in their life as a family, including their marriage, the birth of their three children, and Shakespeare’s departure for London.
One of the aspects I loved most about the narrative in this book was the focus on time. There is the gradual passage of time, as the story charts the birth, infancy, and growth of the three Shakespeare children, as well as the focus on immediate events prior to Hamnet’s death. I particularly enjoyed the intricate detail O’Farrell provides of the activities each family member is absorbed in at the same moment in time in the opening section of the novel, and how the narrative shifts to a single, linear timeframe after Hamnet’s death.
Agnes (more widely known as Anne) is the most powerful voice in the story, and the vast majority of the novel is narrated from her perspective. It is interesting to note that, within the community of Stratford-upon-Avon in which the story takes place, she is arguably more well known than her husband, having gained notoriety for her self-reliant character and abilities as a natural healer. She also has an ethereal, otherworldly quality that would not be amiss from one of Shakespeare’s plays, with a knack for reading and understanding other people. Indeed, it is Agnes who realises that her husband, dismissed by most as ‘the Latin tutor’ or ‘the glove maker’s son’, is struggling to find his place in their day-to-day life in Stratford-upon-Avon, and needs the opportunity to strike out and venture to London. She also has an innate surety about the direction of her life, and that of her family, which makes it all the more painful to experience the impact that the loss of Hamnet has on her.
I must admit, I found this book a challenging read to begin with, and the reason for this was due to my own expectations going into reading a novel about Shakespeare, and certainly not a reflection on Maggie O’Farrell’s brilliant storytelling. I was imagining an account of Shakespeare’s talents as a writer, and the history of ‘Hamlet’ as a play, and what I read was a profound, relatable story about a family simply trying to navigate daily life and deal with exceptional, unexpected loss and grief. You do not need to be a Shakespeare aficionado, or have a prior knowledge of the Bard’s history, to enjoy this novel, and it is in fact a strength of the story that it spends very little time on Shakepeare’s play writing.
For me, it is in Part II of the novel, after Hamnet’s death, where O’Farrell’s writing is at its most powerful, and I started to really connect with the characters and appreciate the focus of the story. At its core, ‘Hamnet’ is a novel about how different people cope with grief, and the scene in which the young Judith approaches her mother to ask her if there is a word to describe someone who was once a twin is particularly raw and poignant (“[…] if its parents die, a child becomes an orphan. But what is the word for what I am?”). The loss of identity, and the need to be physically close to a loved one, are some amongst the many facets of grief explored in the story. For me, the final part of the novel is also testament to the power of grief, and seeing others express that grief, to connect us and bring us closer together.
Profound, raw, and original, this story about the death of an eleven year-old boy is an exploration of the experiences that connect and bind us together as human beings, and cannot fail to resonate with readers four hundred years after the events that inspired it took place.
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