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cheryl

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Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in July 2022

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cheryl said: " 4.5 stars

I needed "a book chosen by a friend" for a reading challenge. I picked a friend I have not seen for 20 years because I knew he was a fellow bibliophile and would choose wisely and well. I senses he'd choose something I might not have picked 4.5 stars

I needed "a book chosen by a friend" for a reading challenge. I picked a friend I have not seen for 20 years because I knew he was a fellow bibliophile and would choose wisely and well. I senses he'd choose something I might not have picked myself, something I'd considered but overlooked without truly good cause. I don't know why I knew that, but I did. And he didn't disappoint. (Actually, he named this his top recommendation but offered a couple others and I'll use one for a similar-but-different "recommended by a friend" prompt.)

Blame the college thesis re Shakespeare ... including a segment on Hamlet...for making me snobby and oddly Bard-phobic all at once (though loved a Shakespeare's dinner theater in Atlanta, also a lifetime ago). In fact, the best known playwright (perhaps best known wordsmith) in the English language goes nameless here, an utterly brilliant move since one can't read the name without some sort of association. Letting him be nameless helps one just see him simply as a frustrated tutor, angry son (rightfully), doting brother, and a young man passionately in love w the town's eccentric nonconformist. And the device also let it be that woman's story. She's Agnes, nothing more and nothing less, not Mrs S.

What I truly did love about Hamnet is how it "put me there". OK...not really a time and place I'd want to actually be, but one I'd visit every time I opened the book. It was transportive (even if I invented that word...not sure). I felt the thin wall between two houses, caught a breeze on the farm, felt the stifling air in a pre-plumbing London.

Agnes was a dear friend, even when I was a tad angry with her (ignoring 2 kids, letting her unnamed husband ignore her (even if i knew he was performing magic with that quill)). Hamnet was a devoted brother and very much simply 11 (he read real). I loved Eliza (said nameless man's side) most. (Though the boy on the ship comes darn close ... so endearing that his involvement (incl fascination w a monkey) had to be brief and innocent, even if he's an unwitting vector bringing quite a few to (watery and dry) graves.

4.5 stars. I don't have a great reason for not rounding up, nothing I can point to or voice, other than I simply don't feel it. Which is good enough for me and perhaps the best reason for any book rating. ...more "

Jul 20, 2022 02:25PM · see review

cheryl’s Quotes

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

tags: books, power-of-words

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