Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - Review

I love Maggie O'Farrell, as you probably know, as I've read and reviewed a few of her books over the course of this blog, and I recommend The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox a lot because I really like it. I follow Maggie's Facebook page so I had heard of this book, but I hadn't ever picked it up. But then it was a book club choice for this year, so when I saw it in a sale in WH Smith I picked it up for a fiver. I was apprehensive because I wasn't sure if it would be a bit too high brow for me. But I picked it up.

And I ended up loving it and I now want everyone I know to read it! I lent it to someone at book club but then I will lend it to my mum because I think she will like it. 

So, if you don't know, Hamnet was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. I knew that, and I knew he died as a child, of the plague. I also knew that he had a twin, Judith, and an older sister, Susanna. But I didn't know much else about his life. And I had a vague impression that the play Hamlet was called that after him. 

Which, indeed, it was. The book starts by saying that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable at the time. Then Hamnet himself is watching Judith as she becomes unwell with what is the bubonic plague. He goes downstairs in the house looking for his mother, his sister, or his grandmother, but can't find any of them. Susanna and his grandmother, Mary, are running errands. His mother is out at Hewlands, her familial home. Hamnet fears his sister will die. 

Lee and I visited Shakespeare's house in Stratford on Avon back in 2020 so it was great that I could envisage the house perfectly. We also went to Anne Hathaway's house but couldn't go in because it was closed due to Covid. But it meant I knew what it looked like. 

So in the book Shakespeare himself is away in London, working and acting and earning his living. The book goes back in time, though, to when he and Anne met. In the book she is called Agnes, because apparently her father's will named her as so. Maggie has really done her research! 

Agnes' mother is portrayed as having been a bit of a witch, a healer, that kind of thing. She died and Agnes' father married Joan, and they had several more children. Agnes and her brother Bartholemew are close in the novel, but she and Joan don't get on. John Shakespeare - William's dad, who he's portrayed as having a volatile relationship with, and who was a glove maker by trade - owed Agnes' dad some money or something and as payment John arranged for William - aged just eighteen - to go tutor some of the younger boys. There he met Agnes, who was older than him and a bit of a wild girl, and who was desperate to leave her stepmother's house. They clearly got married and had Susanna and then the twins. 

The books flips backwards and forwards in time to William and Agnes' relationship and Agnes in particular and how she dealt with her husband and how unhappy he was in Stratford. I don't know how much of this is true but I don't care. It was a good narrative. I also learnt that Hamnet's cause of death is not actually recorded, but it's assumed he did die of the plague. I loved Agnes as a character and I think the book really showed just how difficult life was back then. She didn't have it easy and neither did the rest of the family. 

I think my book club will as a whole have really enjoyed the book but I'm interested for the discussion! I'm giving it five out of five because I loved it.