This book by Maggie O’Farrell has been on my radar for a while, so when my book club nominated it, I jumped at the chance to vote for it.
Not only is it very good, it’s also short, so if you’ve been considering reading this one, know that it won’t take you very long.
While we all know that Shakespeare had a son named Hamnet who died in childhood, there are no records of how the child died. Given the proliferation of the Black Plague at the time, it does seem a likely cause of death. O’Farrell also notes that Shakespeare never makes a single mention of the plague in any of his plays or poems, which does seem to be a fairly striking omission. Then again, since we’ve just been through a pandemic, I can understand if he saw his job as providing escapism for his audience, and it’s hard to escape when you’re confronted with a terror you have to face in real life.
The book goes back and forth in time between Hamnet realizing his twin sister is very ill and trying to get help, and when his parents first meet, making it a kind of a romance as well as a tragedy.
The book is told in first person limited narration, with the second half told primarily from Hamnet’s perspective up until his death. The earlier part is told from William’s perspective only until he meets his wife-to-be, at which point it switches to her perspective. Come to think of it, I think it switches perspective at the moment Hamnet’s older sister, Susanna, is conceived.
Hamnet’s mother, Agnes, is portrayed as a kind of a witch. She doesn’t worship the devil or have magic, per se, but she does seem to be extremely intuitive. She can see a person’s future just by holding their hand. The veil between worlds is thin for her, so she often sees ghosts and knows things no one has told her. She interprets her own dreams and takes them very seriously. She also tends her own garden, which she harvests to make different “potions” and poultices, which the local townsfolk buy from her to cure their various illnesses. The local doctor is not a fan of hers.
In this interpretation, it’s Agnes’ idea for her husband to go to London. They didn’t have a name for depression at the time, but she can sense that something is wrong with him, and that he won’t reach his full potential living with his parents. So she comes up with a plan for him to go to London on business with his father, and that’s how he gets involved with a playhouse. I love the idea of Shakespeare’s wife being responsible for the writer everyone reveres today.
After Hamnet’s death, I thought O’Farrell did a great job portraying grief and how it affects everyone differently, including how that grief can drive a wedge between the parents of the deceased. I can only imagine that physical distance makes the emotional distance that much more powerful.
I love that the book ended with Agnes watching a performance of Hamlet. At first, she’s so pissed that her husband would use their son’s name in a story that has nothing to do with him, but then she sees it as a form of wish fulfillment in which the father dies in the son’s place. Then again, that’s just the first act. Either Agnes never made it to the end of the play, or O’Farrell decided not to include it in her novel. As it is, I thought the ending of the novel was perfect.