TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.

On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.

Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.

Hamnet was the son of William Shakespeare, but other than that we know little about him, save that he died young and was then immortalised by his father in what some believe is his best play. Miss O’Farrell brings this shadowy child to life in her compelling novel about life in Elizabethan times which is described in careful detail. Her beautiful prose brings to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the countryside, as well as the crowds and filth and stink of a capital city often ravaged by the plague. Her characters are beautifully drawn with a deft touch and an understanding of the emotional heart of us all.

It is an episode of the plague which opens this novel with Hamnet desperately seeking help for his sister who has suddenly fallen ill. Alongside this we have the story of how ‘the husband/father’ (William Shakespeare is never mentioned by name in the novel) meets and falls in love with the enigmatic Agnes. Both come from difficult backgrounds and recognise in each other a soulmate who can make them whole, they fall in love and are married. But Agnes comes to realise that she is perhaps not enough for him, and that her husband will never be completely whole until he is able to pursue a life revolving around writing and theatre in London. Agnes is strong enough, and understanding enough, to let her husband go, realising that this is perhaps the only way for her to keep his love.

Alongside this love story we see Hamnet’s struggle to save the life of his sister, a compelling tale even though we know the outcome from the historical record, (although we know that Shakespeare’s son died, we don’t know the exact circumstances). The death of the boy in the novel wrings at the heart-strings and is followed by a compelling description of the grief of a whole family in mourning. When Agnes hears about her husband’s new play, Hamnet, she travels to London to confront him, a journey which brings the novel to a fitting conclusion as the couple come to an understanding of how the loss of their beloved son has impacted both of their lives.

The death of a child is always heart-breaking – it seems to go against nature for a parent to out-live their son – and Miss O’Farrell has portrayed this with a sensitive touch which cannot fail to move the reader. Hamnet is a tale of love and loss, of how parents grieve in their own way for the loss of a child, and how this grief has the potential to tear them apart or to bring them closer together. As such, it is a tale for all people and all times, just like the tales told by Shakespeare himself.

Hamnet can be found on Amazon   

You can find out more about Maggie O’Farrell here