Book Review: Hamnet

Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell

    If you're going to write about William Shakespeare and have him as a character in your novel, you had better be able to make your prose and dialogue sing.

    Maggie O'Farrell is more than up to the task. 

    Although Shakespeare is not the major character in this fictionalized biography, when he speaks, his words glisten. O'Farrell catches his cadence, his rhythms, his poetry You can almost hear the character speaking his words in iambic pentameter. You envision him upon the stage in the Globe Theater, delivering his lines to a silent, enrapted audience.

    Yet the major characters are those who surround William Shakespeare -- his wife, his parents, his in-laws, and his children, including his only son, Hamnet. It is, at its heart, a family story of Shakespeare growing up, coming of age, finding love, and trying to make his way in the world.

    It's a sad story, and at times the despair clings to the pages. The 16th Century was a time of the plague in Europe, and Shakespeare and his family were not immune.

    Still, the strongest, most compelling character in the tale is Shakespeare's wife, called Agnes in the book. O'Farrell portrays her as a feminist before her time, a healer, a strong woman who keeps her family together during illnesses and her husband's long absences. She is sometimes seen as a witch, whose unusual habits include carrying around a kestrel, keeping bees, and going off to the woods to birth her first child.

     Yet she brings magic to the hills around Stratford-upon-Avon. Whether it's the magic that promises and delivers riches and a long, happy life, or requires a steep price for wishes granted, is just one of the themes explored in this book.

    O'Farrell acknowledges her research was necessarily thin. Little is known about Shakespeare's life and times -- heck, even the number of plays he wrote is an open question -- and what is known is disputed. Yes, there was a Hamnet Shakespeare, who had a twin sister, as he does in the book. He died when he was 11. His death may or may not have had an impact on his father's plays, particularly Hamlet.

    So, O'Farrell took that information and made it her own, turning it into this wonderful piece of historical fiction.

     Her writing and her book is extraordinary. At times, especially in the early parts of the book, when she alternates between Shakespeare's youth and his early adult years, it came be a bit confusing.  But it soon comes together, into a heartfelt, heartbreaking novel of love, grief, and pain.