Hamnet and Judith
By Maggie O'Farrell
Penguin Random House
This is one of those books that after you read the last page, you find yourself wishing for more. It’s a fictionalized story about Shakespeare’s family – his wife, his children, his parents – and his inspiration for writing the play Hamlet.
While William is the Shakespeare who has lived on, still famous nearly 500 years after his death, for his words, his stories and his understanding of the human condition, it makes sense that his wife would have also been extraordinary. And this novel makes her so.
Shakespeare’s wife is today known as Anne Hathaway, but in this story, her name is Agnes. She’s a magical woman, eccentric, a healer, a mystic, who feels most at home in the forest. Even if this wasn’t a story about Shakespeare, when I finished the book, I wanted to read more about Agnes, whose mind the reader spends most of the story inhabiting.
Agnes is 26 when she marries William, who is just 18. She’s also pregnant, with their first child. A few years later, twins arrive: Hamnet and Judith. When Hamnet and Judith are 12, they come down with the bubonic plague and Hamnet dies. This isn’t a spoiler – author Maggie O’Farrell opens her book with a historical note telling the reader that Hamnet died, age 11.
Four years later, Shakespeare writes the play Hamlet, a name O’Farrell tells us that was interchangeable with Hamnet in that time. Hamlet, in very broad strokes, is the story of a son Hamlet haunted by his father’s ghost.
Hamnet and Judith, published as Hamnet in the U.S. and the U.K., is the winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. O’Farrell is the author of several other novels and a memoir I Am, I Am, I Am and lives in Edinburgh.
A fascinating look at what Shakespeare’s family life and temperament may have been, this story is an even more fascinating exploration of Agnes, the woman behind the man. It’s emotionally devastating, but so true. Agnes's grief, her joy, her everyday annoyances, are all vividly and accurately portrayed.
This has to be one of the very best novels I have ever read.
Wow, this is the winter's tale I must read :) Especially this winter, where fiction is about the only means of escape open to us. I love stories where writers turn real-life events into their art. Thanks for this review, Tracy. I have missed your reviews in the Van Sun but now I know I don't have to anymore. And here's the All You Wanted to Know about Shakespeare podcast I mentioned to you. Guess which of Will's plays is the Shakespearean expert's favourite? https://www.historyextra.com/period/elizabethan/williiam-shakespeare-life-everything-you-wanted-know-podcast/