One of several titles I pressed into the hands, metaphorically speaking, of friends and strangers this past year. And on my Best Books of 2020 list, the annual post of my favourite reads. The full Instagram post with book covers gallery is at the link.

I had read many reviews of this book, but was not prepared for this story at all. This is a fictional account of how Shakespeare's Hamlet came to be as well as how Shakespeare became the renowned playwright he was. It is based on true facts of his life, so it was very emotional as well. This is not a happily ever after story, it is more of a tragedy. Having said that, Maggie O'Farrell has written a descriptive, emotional story that brought these characters to life in a vivid and realistic way. The events that occurred at the time were in this story, including the loss of a child to the terrible and horrific plague.

The story itself tells of Shakespeare's family, his wife Agnes and his twins, Judith and Hamnet. He is in the telling of the story, but not an integral part of it. I love the character of Agnes. She was so caring and comforting to others in the village yet had some superstitions as well. She put up with being alone with her children most of the time while "her husband" or "the father" was off in London earning a living. She is a strong, likable, and inspiring character. The story itself is almost a dual timeline. The present (when Hamnet is ill) and the past relationship, courtship, and marriage of Agnes and her husband. The past is told in reminiscences that blend into the story perfectly. The setting of the 1580s is told in a way that I felt I knew what was happening at the time, but not in a boring or fact driven way. The writing of this story was beautiful and melodic and even though the theme of grief was a major part of this story, it was a beautifully written book that I definitely recommend.

I loved this book. It's going to be on my best books of the year list and I've nominated in various other places for best of the year. A thing that makes me absolutely crazy is the name change for the North American edition and the terrible cover. The UK edition is one of the most stunning books published this year, so much so that I waited until my copy arrived from England before reading. I understand that the markets are different and publishers sell books differently in different regions, but I don't know anyone who liked this cover and the name change seems completely unnecessary.

All of that aside, the book is astounding. An exploration of grief and the ways it manifests, I'm firmly in the "Maggie O'Farrell does magic" camp of readers who appreciates the editorial decisions she has made in this book. Having Shakespeare remain unnamed throughout the story solidifies his role as father only in this context, and the notion that the audience knows more about him than his wife sets up the central "conflict" of the story between him and his wife. Experiencing the loss of their son, each parents struggles with grief in their own ways and the last pages of this book paid every single choice that O'Farrell made off in a meaningful and satisfying way.

Highly recommended.

The characters alone in this story really keep it feeling alive and enthralling. The way that Maggie writes is beautiful and is very easy to follow and fall in love with. I found myself unable to put this down and even bought a second copy once published for friends to read.
Wonderfully moving.

Such an imaginative story, telling the story of Hamnet Shakespeare and his early demise. The character of Anne Hathaway, William's wife is described and developed so well. You don't need to be a fan of The Bard to appreciate this lovely book.

Oddly enough, even though this book took me nearly 4 months to finish, I actually think it’s very good. I’m not sure how much I liked it, but I do appreciate how gifted the author is in writing the story. It’s clearly very well crafted, and I would not hesitate to pick up another book by this author again. But it took me 4 months, and that’s largely because I found it fairly difficult to follow. There are multiple timelines along the same story, and it’s never explicitly stated or clear which one you are currently in. It took me ages to figure this out. Not to mention the fact that a lot of names have been changed in this story, and I struggled with who is supposed to be who. It’s obvious to every reader who this story is about (even though it’s never explicitly stated), and yet neither the name William nor Shakespeare can be found within its pages. You’d be hard-pressed to find the names Anne or Hathaway either. The author explains the Anne irregularity in the author’s note, and how Anne is actually Agnes, which is likely to be her real name anyhow. But no one flips to the author’s note at the end before they read the book, and therefore the only way I even knew who we were talking about at the beginning was because of a review I preemptively read before I started. And then there’s all the extended family members, some of whom appear in more than one timeline, and some of them have more than one name too, which just makes it terribly difficult to even follow along. Mix that with the writing that nearly almost is too pretty for a complicated story about grief and family in 16th century England. Now, back to the part where I said I liked this book, because I really truly did. Even though I found it difficult to follow along, the writing was comforting and made me feel inside the story, feeling the emotions of the love and the loss between its pages. To read about how Hamnet’s parents and family reacted to his death was actually a wonderful experience, and had I been able to develop an attachment to any of them, surely I would have teared up. While historical fiction is my favourite genre, I don’t tend to read Renaissance books or really anything past Jane Austen, which means that while my experience in 15th century historical fiction is limited, I actually enjoyed my time reading this and would consider reading books about it again. And if they are written by Maggie O’Farrell, even better - as long as I can tell who is who and which timeline is which.

It is one thing to learn about Shakespeare in English class and hear the names of his family merely as names in history; it is quite another to be enthralled in a story, empathizing with characters, and watching as what you learned in English comes alive. I am quite familiar with Shakespeare's work, but Hamnet and Judith brought forward aspects of his family life that I never would have considered: theories, hopes, dreams, and speculations that may have made it into his plays.

Hamnet and Judith is about Shakespeare and his family including his two twins named Hamnet and Judith. Of course, Hamnet sounds very similar to one of his most famous plays Hamlet, and we see glimpses of certain thoughts and lines throughout the novel as well as perhaps motivation for writing that play. Hopeful, sweet, heartbreaking, and moving, I thoroughly enjoyed this read.

I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Found parts of the book too descriptive and tedious but the relating of the grief of losing a child was heart wrenching. I think the connection with twins is a real thing and that loss was also aptly described. Life in Shakespeare’s time is no different than today with father’s having to leave home for work, households having multiple family members living together, navigating life and death and the every day events to just exist and survive.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an electronic copy to read and review.

This novel tells a fictionalized account of Judith and Hamnet, the twins of Shakespeare. I'll be honest - I don't think I ever thought of Shakespeare as a father. I'm not even sure that I knew he had children. Regardless, this novel brought his wife and children, as well as his parents, to life.

There are so many things about this novel that I just loved. The writing style is just brilliant - clear, descriptive, and purposeful. The story weaves itself around the current time (when Hamnet and Judith are 11) and the past. I also love that the story surrounds Shakespeare without actually saying his name.

Everything about this novel is just perfect.

Rich, immersive, and evocative!

Hamnet & Judith is a vivid, compelling, powerful interpretation that sweeps you away to Stratford-upon-Avon in the late 1500s and into the life of the Shakespeare family, from the courtship and marriage of William and Agnes to the devastating loss of their young son Hamlet at the tender age of eleven.

The prose is eloquent and emotive. The characters are well-drawn, endearing, and authentic. And the plot is an absorbing tale of life, loss, love, grief, family, aspirations, heartache, and motherhood.

Overall, Hamnet & Judith is a pensive, alluring, beautifully written story by O’Farell that does a remarkable job of highlighting her incredible knowledge and research into these renowned historical figures whose personal lives are often unknown, forgotten, or overshadowed by the patriarch’s incredibly profound contribution to the world of drama and literature.

In Stratford-upon-Avon, a young Latin tutor falls in love with Agnes, an unconventional woman known as an herbalist and healer. They marry and have three children, a daughter Susanna and a set of twins, Hamnet and Judith. The father moves to London and while he is there, Judith becomes ill with the bubonic plague. The first part of the book focuses on how Agnes and her husband meet and the early years of their marriage; the second part is a study of grief and loss as we see how the death of a child affects the parents and family and the toll it has on the marriage.

From the book’s title and the plot summary, most people will know that the story is based on the life of William Shakespeare. The playwright, however, is never named; he is described as “the son” or “the tutor” or “the husband” or “the father.” Perhaps he is unnamed so that he does not overshadow his wife who is really the protagonist of this retelling.

Agnes is a spirited woman who has an uncanny ability to read people. She also has the gift of foresight which allows her to sense future events. She is a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast supporter of her husband. It is the relationship with her husband that I found especially imaginative. When she first meets him and takes his hand, she feels “Something of which she had never known the like. . . . It was far-reaching: this much she knew. It had layers and strata, like a landscape. There were spaces and vacancies, dense patches, underground caves, rises and descents. There wasn’t enough time for her to get a sense of it all – it was too big, too complex. . . . She knew there was more of it than she could grasp, that it was bigger than both of them.” Later, she tells him that she has seen the place in his head: “’a whole country in there, a landscape.’” When she sees his writing, she does not understand what he is writing but knows that “The branches of the forest are so dense you cannot feel the rain.” What wonderful ways to describe the mind of a literary genius!

Agnes is not portrayed as a countrywoman who is not the equal of her husband. She is an intelligent woman who senses her husband’s unhappiness. He is a restless soul abused by a violent father. When she sees his melancholy, she conspires to send him to London where she suspects he may find opportunities appropriate to his mind. She would prefer him at home with her and the children but she loves her husband so much that she sends him away so he can become who he is meant to be.

The second part of the novel, which describes the grief at the loss of a child, is almost too painful to read because it is rendered so exquisitely. The twin, Susanna, and the parents all grieve differently. Agnes is almost totally destroyed. Because she and her husband cannot speak of their loss, they misread each other’s responses. Agnes’ husband feels that “the magnitude, the depth of his wife’s grief . . . exerts a fatal pull. It is like a dangerous current that, if he were to swim too close, might suck him in, plunge him under. He would never surface again; he must hold himself separate in order to survive. If he were to go under, he would drag them all with him.” He chooses to return London, and Agnes feels he has abandoned her and his family. In an interesting twist, the author connects the loss of a child with the writing of one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.

The poetic prose is hauntingly beautiful. Even a mundane activity like removing honeycombs is described elegantly: “She brings a honeycomb out of the skep and squats to examine it. Its surface is covered, teeming, with something that appears to be one moving entity: brown, banded with gold, wings shaped like tiny hearts. It is hundreds of bees, crowded together, clinging to their comb, their prize, their work. . . . The bees lift, in unison, to swarm above her head, a cloud with no edges, an airborne net that keeps casting and casting itself. . . . the honey leaves the comb with a cautious, near reluctant drop. Slow as sap, orange-gold, scented with the sharp tang of thyme and the floral sweetness of lavender, it falls into the pot Agnes holds out. A thread of honey stretches from comb to pot, widening, twisting.”

The novel takes advantage of the fact that little is known about Shakespeare’s family and imagines an explanation for what is not known: Why did Shakespeare marry a woman older than he, especially one who would be considered an unlettered countrywoman? Did he have to marry her because she was pregnant with his child? Why did he bequeath his wife the “second-best” bed?

I highly recommend this book. I first read Maggie O’Farrell last year. Her The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox impressed me very much (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2019/08/review-of-vanishing-act-of-esme-lennox.html). This book left me in total awe. Though it begins slowly, it becomes an intimate, eloquent study of grief that is powerfully affecting. It will leave you moved, much as you might be by a play written by the protagonist’s husband.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

I will admit when I requested Hamnet and Judith that this was about Shakespeare’s son and daughter. I think we all have a soft spot for the bard as one of the worlds greatest playwrights and has given us some of our most famous quotes to date. I think the author did an excellent job interpreting what happened to Hamnet and Judith but with that I found out once Hamnet died the story kind of felt meh. We are then dealing with the rest of the family and their grief, William isn’t in it much its mostly Anne, maybe that could be why? Overall, Hamnet and Judith is a good historical fiction read which loses its momentum halfway through.

Hamnet (or Hamnet and Judith as my North American arc is titled) is a very stirring historical read. I started reading it when the world (or my world) shutdown because of COVID, mid-March. Living through this pandemic while the characters are living through the plague made me feel connected to the story in a way which seems silly because of the incredible differences in situation, but still, it was a lens I wouldn't have otherwise had when reading this story. The story itself is beautifully told, very female-centered and Shakespeare himself is really hardly in it. The real protagonist is Agnes, the mother of Hamnet and Judith and Susanna, wife of Shakespeare. The life she puts up with, living with her in-laws, raising her children practically alone, is so well-drawn and I felt a deep empathy for her. I don't think it's a secret that Hamnet eventually dies from the plague and I had a good hard cry during that part of the novel, with Agnes having to grieve for her son, even as she prepares his body for burial. This is a very emotional novel and I cried again at the end, which you will just have to read to experience.

3.5/5
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was an interesting book for me- it took me a good 100+ pages to get into it. I think it is very intelligently written, and her descriptions are incredible. I don't know when I've felt so "there" when reading a novel. However, I did find that it didn't actually have anything to do with Shakespeare, or his family at all, and I admit, I was looking for that. I think that keeping Shakespeare as a distant, secondary character certainly allowed Hamnet and Agnes to stay in focus, but for me, it could have been an entirely unrelated family. Overall, fantastic historical fiction, just not quite as connected to Shakespeare as I expected!

I absolutely loved this book.  It had a really slow start, but it made you wonder what is going to happen and how things are going to play out.  I was really curious about how accurate the story would be to actual historical events, and while the author obviously has to take liberties because there's only so much historical information about the period, I felt it was really well done and that she made it as accurate as possible.  

The writing style for this novel was really unique.  It felt detached in a way, while you still got a lot of information about what the characters were thinking and doing.  The author took you back and forth between the present timeline and the history of the family and how Shakespeare and his wife got together.  There was a very well rounded picture of this family and it offered explanations for how Hamnet got sick and how Shakespeare ended up going to London from his family home.  I appreciated these touches, and found it really interesting to see how the author interpreted the events of Shakespeare's life, even though there was definitely less of a focus on him.  I find this time period really interesting, and find Shakespeare as a figure a fascinating person and I liked the experience of reading about him.

Overall, I really enjoyed the way the story was told.  I mentioned earlier that it had a slow start, and I stand by that, but I definitely think it was intentional.  The author pulled out the story by splicing in the moments from the past of how they got to that place.  If she hadn't done that, then the story would have been too quick and not as well developed.  She really worked to give you the fullest picture possible and while that might not be for everyone, it really worked for me.

I also really liked how this story handled grief.  It's not a spoiler to tell you that Hamnet dies, because that's historical fact, and it wouldn't be a spoiler to tell you that his family is devastated by his loss.  You can imagine how his twin sister might feel, or how his parents would feel, and all of that is portrayed in this novel, and it is portrayed in a way that is realistic, and makes you feel equally devastated.  It also showed a variety of ways of grieving, which I loved because there are so many different ways that people deal with grief and it's important to portray those in a novel that deals with loss.

I really, really enjoyed the way this novel came together in the end.  I won't say too much of it, but the conclusion of this story is high on the list of reasons that I loved this story.  It was very well done and moving.  On the whole it was very well written, and I highly recommend that you check this book out on July 21st, when it releases.  I'm so glad that I read it.

Hamnet is a novel that tries so desperately hard to be a good novel that its very attempts to be good end up making it so much worse than just a bad novel.

When it comes to Hamnet, the beginning and end of it is: O'Farrell's writing doesn't work, so nothing else does. The best word I can use to describe the writing is laboured. You cannot go a single paragraph without being bombarded by a tide of superfluous, overwrought prose. And it's not necessarily that O'Farrell's writing is bad, it's just that there's too much of it; the whole novel is bogged down in its own excessively ornate writing.

And because the writing is so unrelentingly verbose, the pacing in Hamnet suffers, and suffers badly. I just wanted O'Farrell to MOVE ON. I don't need to know that Shakespeare's hunger was like a rat snarling in his stomach or the names of the 500 different types of herbs that Agnes uses, I just need for the story to please, please move on.

Also, the character work is abysmal, just all over the place. From a storytelling perspective, Agnes is an almost intrinsically bad character. The whole thing about Agnes's character in this novel is that she Knows everything. Because she possesses some kind of sixth sense, she's able to see into the future and read people's minds. And most of the time, she's not wrong about either of those things. Even the novel itself makes this explicit,

"Bartholomew nods. 'Now, I can't pretend to understand her choice, in marrying you, but I do know one thing about my sister. You want to know what it is?'
'Yes'
'She is rarely wrong. About anything. It's a gift or a curse, depending on who you ask.'

I'm sorry, but why would I want to read about a character who knows everything all the time and who is very rarely wrong????? I can't tell you how much it irritated me that in most cases Agnes could just tell what someone had done or what would happen to them just by looking at them. Not only is that incredibly boring, but it's also just such lazy writing. Instead of actually having characters properly talk to each other or try to evaluate each other's feelings, you just make one of them psychic and bam everything is automatically solved!

(And I know the fact that the one thing that Agnes is wrong about is the death of her son, Hamnet, which makes it that much more devastating, but STILL, that doesn't negate the fact that for the rest of the novel, she was an incredibly boring character to read about.)

Agnes, at least, had some character development, even if it was bad. All the other characters were pretty much just there to be there. Also, there was instalove, and instalove of the most annoying, vanilla kind. Agnes sees Shakespeare for the first time, she touches his hand, can tell through her Magical Powers that he's a good person or something (?) and then what do you know they're in love! Pass.

Hamnet was just not that good. The pacing was glacial, the writing was overwrought, and the characters were irritating at best and non-entities at worst. Definitely not for me.

"There is a part of her that would like to wind up time, to gather it in like yarn..."
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This book is so beautifully written! I loved the symbolism, the metaphors, and the way the author made me feel for the characters. The book centers around William Shakespeare's family, which I thought was really interesting. I like that the author mentioned Shakespeare as a person, but never by name, as the book is not about him, but is about his wife and his children. I went into this book thinking it would be about Shakespeare and his writing, and while it definitely played a role, it was not the center of the book.
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I also did not know that Anne Hathaway was called Agnes in her fathers will, so the author chose to call her Agnes instead of Anne in the book. I thought that was an interesting choice. We really get to spend time with Agnes and feel her joy, love, struggles, and pain. The way she coped with all the new changes was riveting and the author did a good job of making me empathize with her.
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I highly recommend this book. It is so well written and engaging!

With both an introductory “Historical Note” and a concluding “Author's Note”, it is explained in Hamnet and Judith what little is known of William Shakespeare's family: That his wife (popularly remembered as Anne Hathaway but named as Agnes [apparently pronounced Ann-yis or Agn-yez] in her father's will (so that is the name that author Maggie O'Farrell uses for her) and three children (Susanna and the younger twins Hamnet and Judith [with the explanation that “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” were the same name, used interchangeably in written records at the time) remained in Stratford (living in the home of William's father, a glovemaker) while the playwright lived and worked alone in London. In 1596, Hamnet died of unrecorded causes at age eleven, and four years later, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. With this scant information (and something like thirty years of intermittent research), O'Farrell attempts to flesh out this cast of supporting players; these “historical footnotes”, with their uncertain names, but once upon a time, very real and fully human existences.

I did cry while reading this book, more than once, and I reckon that's a sign that I was connecting with the humanity of these people and their experiences. And as that seems to have been O'Farrell's objective, I would say she achieved it.

I had never read any of Maggie O"Farrell's fiction before - I discovered her when I was suggested 'I Am, I Am, I Am' a few years ago, and loved it. I was very excited to get my hands on her newest book, as I was eagerly looking forward to it.
I really, really liked this book - a notch right below loved. I found it so interesting how she took a real historical event, and weaved an entire fictional narrative surrounding it, how she fleshed out these characters that we may know by name but know very little else about, how she laid out the novel with alternating chapters between the events leading up to Hamnet's death and Agnes' and her husband's history. I especially enjoyed how Shakespeare was not the main focal point of the story - and in fact was never even named - but rather the emphasis was placed on the rest of his family.

I read this book in a matter of days, which is no small feat under quarantine with 2 small children demanding your attention all day!

**I will not be posting this review on Goodreads - this is my first experience with NetGalley and I didn't realize this was a possibility, and I have already posted on Goodreads. I did want to send my feedback however, in case it could be of some interest. Many thanks for a great first NetGalley read!!**

With each Maggie O'Farrell novel I read, I come to love her writing more and more.

This novel about Shakespeare's wife and children is no exception. O'Farrell's writing is cinematic, sensual and entrancing. Within minutes of starting to read, I was fully immersed in the beautiful, tragic world O'Farrell creates, fully invested in what was happening to her characters and fully in love with the story. One slight quibble was the rapidity of the ending. I really wanted the end to be just a little more developed so I could linger just a little while longer in the world O'Farrell creates
4.5 happy stars from this reader.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.