Hamnet

I recently finished reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. It took me a few pages to get into it but it turned out to be a marvelous novel and one that I really liked.

This historical novel switches back and forth between two different timelines. One on the day the plague first affects Hamnet’s twin sister, Judith and the other some fifteen years earlier when Hamnet’s father, never named, meets the woman he marries – one Agnes Hathaway.

Agnes (pronounced Ann-yis) is a free spirit, daughter of a farmer and connected to the natural world. She is a kind of Cinderella in her stepmother’s household where the poet, and future playwright is teaching latin to her brother to settle a debt incurred by his father. There is strong chemistry between them and soon there is a first kiss and then wild sex in the apple shed.

When the book opens, Hamnet has discovered his twin sister ill and desperately searches for someone to help, but his father is away in London writing plays and his mother is off tending to her bees. His grandmother and aunt are nowhere to be found.

The book builds through the marriage of the playwright and Agnes as he leaves her and his children to go to London and write plays. He sends money home and buys property in Stratford but he rarely comes home which places incredible stress on the marriage. After the death of Hamnet the two of them feel deep grief but he returns to London and, five years later writes a play using a common version of Hamnet’s name in which the father dies rather than the son.

O’Farrell’s writing is lyric and often poetic and it’s an easy read. The novel was one of NYT’s best books of 2020 and I strongly recommend it.