“She grows up fascinated by the hands of others, drawn always to touch them, to feel them in hers. That muscle between thumb and forefinger is, to her, irresistible. It can be shut and opened like the beak of a bird and all the strength of the grip can be found there, all the power of the grasp.”
This book is so sad. I almost couldn’t get through it. The writing evokes so much empathy and emotion that I had to put it down several times and recover before returning to it.
Hamnet is an imagined story of Anne (Agnes) Hatheway, Shakespeare’s wife in Stratford and London in the 1590s. No part of William Shakespeare’s name is ever mentioned. The reader knows him as a Latin tutor, husband, father, and playwright. He is off stage for much of the story. The author writes a beautiful narrative of Agnes’s grief as a child when her mother dies and when she has to deal with an unloving stepmother. She finds happiness when she marries and has children. However, living with her inlaws, especially her volatile father-in-law, causes much grief. Her grief increases as the pestilence (bubonic plague) affects her community and her family. Maggie O’Farrell conveys the heartrending grief of losing a child during the plague with heartbreaking, vivid language.
This book is a true literary work with lots of foreshadowing, characterization, and symbolism. Agnes’s focus on nature and her ability to see more than others borders on fantasy, but it really makes her an interesting character who has the uncanny ability to connect with others, including humans. In addition to the theme of grief, which prevails, O’Farrell delves into sibling relationships, especially twins. Hamnet has a twin sister, Judith, and they are portrayed as so interconnected that they are mistaken for each other and thrive on each other’s essence. Additionally, Agnes has a unique relationship with her brother, Bartholomew.
The differences between country living and city living are depicted in a way that rings true for the modern world. Agnes is called a simpleton and a rural idiot, yet her knowledge about plants and animals is superior to the urbanites. Her instincts and insights are also super developed. Through Agnes, the reader explores trust in a marriage and families. Hamnet won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and it is clear that O’Farrell has successfully created a fully evolved and interesting 16th-century female character.
From the book:
HISTORICAL NOTE In the 1580s, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins. The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.
Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. —Steven Greenblatt, “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet,” New York Review of Books (October 21, 2004)
