HAMNET
MAGGIE O’FARRELL Tinder, 384pp, £20
In her latest novel, Maggie O’farrell enters the domestic life in Stratford of Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway and her children, and takes its title from his son Hamnet who died of bubonic plague at the age of 11. It is, said Stephanie Merritt in the Observer, ‘a work of profound understanding’. Merritt was among several reviewers to point out that the title is misleading as ‘its central character and beating heart is the boy’s mother, whom O’farrell calls Agnes’.
O’farrell’s Agnes is a witchy figure who gathers herbs for medicine and tames falcons. In the Financial
Times, Rebecca Abrams was moved by the attention to emotional detail: ‘The description of Agnes laying out her son’s body for burial and seeing everywhere the proof of his aliveness is an astonishing piece of writing, a poised and profoundly moving portrait of the indelible imprint of love and loss.’ Joanna Briscoe, in the Guardian, was also affected by ‘a breathtakingly moving study of grief … O’farrell’s portrait of maternal and sibling bereavement is so accurately expressed it’s almost too painful to read.’
Other reviewers found O’farrell’s prose a challenge. For Claire Allfree in the Evening Standard, the scenesetting was ‘a little bit too leisurely’ and she read it with ‘faint impatience’. In the Times, Johanna Thomas-corr thought it ‘fey and humourless. A novel that ultimately feels precious and worthy.’ And John Self in the
Irish Times regretted O’farrell’s tendency to use three adjectives where one will do: ‘the problem with piling on the descriptions is that it doesn’t deepen the reader’s understanding, it dilutes it.’