Hamnet

Hamnet ~ Maggie O’Farrell

In the 1580s, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins.

The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven.

Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.

This is the basis of Maggie O’Farrell’s gorgeous novel, Hamnet. I read Hamnet a few years ago, and I liked it, but I felt like I was really missing something. This was definitely a me problem, but I didn’t connect with it the way I wanted to. I think I had two issues with it. 1. I kept expecting the book to be more about William Shakespeare, and for him to be named and his fame to be an important aspect of the story. So I spent a lot of time waiting for something that did not happen. Wasted energy on my part. 2. I am a terrible reader of physical books. This has not always been true, it is not always true now, but I do most of my physical book reading in bed. Reading horizontally, especially in bed, means I tend to drift off after a few pages (sometimes a few paragraphs. This treatment works surprisingly well for some books, and not at all for others. It worked OK for Hamnet, I followed the story, but the writing here is so gorgeous, it deserves better. I thought I might do better with it if I listened to the audiobook. This worked so well for me, I LOVED it this time. LOVED. The truly intricate details of things the characters were thinking and noticing gave it so much depth.

Hamnet goes back and forth in time…it starts with Hamnet looking for help for his ill sister, and then gives us a glimpse of the romance between their parents, of how they fell in love when he was tutoring her half brothers, how they managed a marriage that her step-mother opposed.

Agnes, mother of Hamnet, is such a rich, fascinating character. As imagined by O’Farrell, she is a woman of nature. She heals people in the village with herbs and tinctures. She spends time in her garden and in the woods, she can tell a lot about a person by holding their hand in a particular way, she has visions.

Think of this scene…Agnes and her groom are walking to church to be married. She is missing her mother, who died when she was a young girl. O’Farrell could have said, “Agnes is wishing that her mother were here. She senses her presence still.” Instead, she gives us the lush description that tells so much more.

“She senses, too, somewhere off to the left, her own mother. She would be here with her had life taken a different turn. She would be the one holding her hand as Agnes walked to her wedding, her fingers encasing her daughter’s. Her footsteps would have followed her beat. They would be walking this path together, side by side. It would have been her making the crown, affixing it to Agnes’s head, brushing the hair so that it hung all around her. She would have taken the blue ribbons and wound them around her stockings, woven them into the hanks of her hair. It would have been her.

So it follows, of course, that she will be here now, in whatever form she can manage. Agnes does not need to turn her head, does not want to frighten her away. It is enough to know that she is there, manifest, hovering, insubstantial. I see you, she thinks. I know you are here.”

Agnes gives birth to her first child in the woods, alone. She falls in love with her husband because of his complicated, amazing brain, which she sees long before anyone else. His father is a disgraced glove maker, and no one really thinks much of his prospects in town. Agnes sees that living under his father’s roof is slowly killing him, and suggests that perhaps he could expand the family business by selling gloves in London. She has never left her village.

Hamnet and Judith (the book was released under this title in Canada) are obviously not identical twins, but they are very similar looking, and are very close, best friends, they each feel like they are one person. When they are born prematurely, Hamnet is healthy, Judith is much more frail. Agnes watches over her carefully, takes close care to ensure she stays healthy. When Judith falls ill, Agnes works furiously to save her. Hamnet catches the illness and dies.

The writing is so evocative, so gorgeous. So heartbreaking. The grief of the family is so palpable, it broke my heart.

”Agnes is a woman broken into pieces, crumbled and scattered around. She would not be surprised to look down, one of these days, and see a foot over in the corner, an arm left on the ground, a hand dropped on the floor. Her daughters are the same. Susanna’s face is set, her brows lowered in something like anger. Judith just cries, on and on, silently; the tears leak from her and will, it seems, never stop.

How were they to know that Hamnet was the pin holding them together? That without him they would all fragment and fall apart, like a cup shattered on the floor?

The husband, the father, paces the room downstairs, that first night, and the one after. Agnes hears him from the bedroom upstairs. There is no other sound. No crying, no sobbing, no sighing. Just the scuff-thud, scuff-thud of his restless feet, walking, walking, walking, like someone trying to find their way back to a place for which they have lost the map.”

I loved this book so much. When I saw the gorgeous film adaptation, I thought I liked that more. Now that I have listened to the audiobook, I have changed my mind. We’ll see if I change it back, the DVD release is set for March 3, and I want to add it to my video library. Highly recommended.