Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell is about the death of Shakespeare's only son, mostly told through the eyes of his wife Agnes (a form of Anne) and the child. But, it's not just about Hamnet. The story alternates between Hamnet's final day and how Agnes and William Shakespeare met, fell in love, and married and theorizes about how Hamnet's death may have influenced Shakespeare's writing of Hamlet. 

In Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell has imagined an Agnes with a finely-tuned sixth sense and a skill for healing with herbs. Shakespeare himself has a lesser role. He is the love interest, the abused child, the unhappy young man, the absentee father. He has a desk where he writes feverishly when he can, but he's stuck working a job in which he's not suited, for a good portion of the book. When he finally is able to do what he chooses, he's mostly out of the picture. 

I love Maggie O'Farrell's writing. Hamnet is melancholy of tone and the child's death is heartbreaking but the story is skillfully crafted and ends, fortunately, on an uplifting note. 

I bought my copy of Hamnet because it was my F2F book group's June selection but it just happened to be the one book I most regretted not ordering before the end of the year and the beginning of my book-buying ban. So I was pleased to have an excuse to buy it! Unfortunately, the book group discussion was not great. Nobody seemed to understand what the author was trying to portray and I don't think anyone else had read O'Farrell before. There is an author's note, at least in the copy I have, so I was surprised that the other group members didn't understand that it's fiction based on the real-life characters but with some alterations from the commonly-known or assumed story, based on her research, along with the magical touch of her own imagination. 

Highly recommended - A story of family dynamics, unique personalities, finding love, discovering your passion, and how very difficult it is to break through grief. While Hamnet is a work of fiction, I suspect it is very well researched. O'Farrell makes you feel, smell, and hear the time in which the book takes place. Marvelously done. 

Hamnet was my third read by O'Farrell and I'm so impressed with her that I've started an O'Farrell section on my shelves, although I don't know what I did with the first book, Instructions for a Heatwave. I may have passed that one on. I enjoyed it but it didn't blow me away like the last two O'Farrells I've read, the other being I Am, I Am, I Am. Click on the titles if you're interested in reading the other reviews. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell is definitely in my Top 10 2020 reads, so far. Subtitled "Seventeen Brushes With Death," it is a memoir that examines 16 times O'Farrell easily could have lost her life but survived or escaped danger. The final essay is about her daughter's extreme allergies and how the author cherishes every day with her, knowing that she could lose her daughter at any time.

Highly recommended - The writing in I Am I Am I Am is spectacular. Stunning prose, often unsettling but always written in a way that makes you feel the raw emotion of near drowning or the sharp fear of encountering dangerous men, the genuine grief of loss after a pregnancy disaster. Just an amazing work of art, really. I don't know about other readers, but O'Farrell had me thinking about my own frightening experiences for days. Also, the last line of the final essay choked me up.


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Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
Copyright 2013
Alfred A. Knopf - Fiction
290 pp.

She rented a one-room walkup in which everything was something else: the tiny bathtub masquerading as a counter in the kitchen, the bed hiding upright in the wardrobe like an assassin.

~p. 73 of ARC (changes may have been made to the final print version)

Early morning in Gillerton Road.  The loamy not-quite dark peculiar to big cities is only just giving in to light.  The brick terraces are still in shadow, the sky is the color of old milk and the trees along the pavements have gathered up the remaining gloom into their branches.  The previous day and the day yet to come hang in a balance, each waiting for the other to make a move.

~p. 103 of ARC

It is 1976.  In the midst of a heatwave in London, Gretta Riordan's husband goes for his daily walk and doesn't return.  Robert is a creature of habit and a kind and loving man.  His sudden disappearance, followed by the discovery that he's cleaned out his bank account is shocking.  After a distraught Gretta informs her family, her grown children all return home one by one to help figure out what has happened and locate their missing father.

From the cover:

As the siblings tease out clues about their father's whereabouts, they navigate rocky pasts and long-held secrets, until at last their search brings them to their ancestral home in Ireland, where the truth of their parents' lives -- and their own -- is suddenly revealed.  Wise, lyrical, instantly engrossing, Instructions for a Heatwave is a work of exceptional intelligence and grace from a writer at the height of her powers.

My thoughts:

Because I'd just exited a book I absolutely could not bear to put down, I wasn't "instantly engrossed" in Instructions for a Heatwave, although I suspect that it would have grabbed me sooner at just about any other time.  It took a couple days before I managed to shake the characters from Is This Tomorrow out of my head and get involved with the Riordans.  But, I kept reading in the hopes that the characters  in Instructions for a Heatwave would pull me into their world and about 1/3 of the way in I did become thoroughly immersed in the story. Instructions for a Heatwave is a work of skilled, elegant writing with excellent characterization and an extraordinarily satisfying ending, definitely recommended.  This is my first Maggie O'Farrell book and I will seek out more by the author.

Cover thoughts:

You may have noticed this photo in my sidebar:

 

The cover image at the top of this post is the final American cover.  The ARC I received was actually rather plain, just a white cover with a photo of a redhead (the author's photo, near as I can tell).  Occasionally, if I like a different cover better than what I've got, I'll go so far as to print out a copy of the alternate cover and replace the cover I dislike.  That's just one of my little eccentricities; I like a pretty cover.  So, I printed out the British cover, which I think is absolutely gorgeous and a total grabber, re-covered the book and photographed it while reading.  I love bright, colorful covers. The illustration of a key on the American cover is relevant.  When Robert disappears, he has the key to the family's shed in his pocket. But, I found the key image frightfully dull.  I would look right past the American cover and pick up the British version if they were on the same display.  

My thanks to A. A. Knopf for the advance reader copy.

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.