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Robert is currently reading

Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in June 2020

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Robert said: " Sometimes you read a book and the subject matter just hits you. I have just finished Hamnet and I am feeling a sense of awe. One because this is a book about grief and secondly because Maggie O’Farrell gets away with it.

A little background knowledge Sometimes you read a book and the subject matter just hits you. I have just finished Hamnet and I am feeling a sense of awe. One because this is a book about grief and secondly because Maggie O’Farrell gets away with it.

A little background knowledge ; Hamnet was Shakespeare’s son, who died under mysterious circumstances when he was 11 years old. Most likely it was the plague but there’s no real evidence. A few years later Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in his honor.

The book is divided into two parts. The first concerns Shakespeare’s courtship of Anne Hathaway, or here named Agnes as that’s was what her father called her. Agnes’ early pregnancy and their marriage. Then the book is about the birth of Agnes’ three children and Hamnet’s death.

Although I mention Shakespeare, he’s really a bit player. In fact his name is not even mentioned, being referred to as her husband or the glover’s son etc. The real focus is on Agnes : her ability to read minds, her pet hawk and her perseverance. She is also a survivor, a rebel and a powerhouse.

The second part is about grief. How it affects people. For Agnes and William, it means depression, a void, fear and yet they both realise that they have to go on despite all these challenges.

Other themes include snapshots of life in the Elizabethan era, the role of women in that period and, obviously the spread of the plague (this section is worth the price of the book alone).

As for style O’Farrell uses one that I’m not too particularly fond of, that robotic type of writing that is gaining popularity. However in this case it didn’t annoy me at all. In fact the restrained style helped the more emotional pieces from becoming self indulgent. Hamnet is definitely not an emotionally manipulative novel despite the overall sadness of the second part.

Hamnet is an oddly prescient novel. Considering that the plague features AND people’s methods of stopping it includes quarantine and lockdowns proves that history can repeat itself. It’s also is about a section of Shakespeare’s life which is not really examined in novels. At the moment Hamnet has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Ms. Mantel does not get her way, then this is a surefire winner. ...more "

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(page 268 of 372)
— Jun 01, 2020 11:46PM

Jun 02, 2020 12:01PM · see review

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The Book of X

by Sarah Rose Etter (Goodreads Author)

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Feb 04, 2026 06:36PM

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The Benefactors

by Wendy Erskine (Goodreads Author)

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Feb 04, 2026 12:53AM

Robert’s Quotes

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

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“Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.”
― Richard Powers

tags: librarians

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“We looked at each other. And it occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call “the Planet of Earth.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

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