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Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell (Goodreads Author)

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Reading for the 2nd time

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Tony said: " Maybe O'Farrell was so daunted by writing a story that includes Shakespeare and his family that she just tried too hard, which adversely affected the book mightily.
One feels the effort on every page, which has a deadening impact on the reader. One m Maybe O'Farrell was so daunted by writing a story that includes Shakespeare and his family that she just tried too hard, which adversely affected the book mightily.
One feels the effort on every page, which has a deadening impact on the reader. One major stylistic flaw is that there are just far too many adjectives, often arriving in triplets :

"The same face, but this one is alive, stricken, trembling." Many of these adjectives are used in cliched ways, the afore mentioned "trembling" is used far too often to signify emotion. Other adjectives are used to over-egg the prose :

""Where is everyone?" he booms, in his biggest, loudest voice." "Biggest" and "loudest" could quite easily have been left out with no lessening of the sense. Same with numerous cases of unnecessary repetition :

"Susanna sews. She sews and sews". "Agnes looks at this face. She looks and looks."

Some of her similes are just plain dull : "making her heart leap like a deer" or when an empty stomach sounds like the growling of a dog. Surely there are fresh ways to express things, ones which have you nodding your head in appreciation, rather than shaking your head in disappointment.

Her descriptions likewise, go on and on until they topple into banality. The saying "less is more" certainly needs applying here.

Plot wise, the decision to make Agnes some sort of child of nature at one with the flora and fauna, responding to her intuition and possessing an ability to foretell events, just doesn't work, at least not for this reader. There is nobility in the daily round of making one's way through difficulties and minor crises, that the book just doesn't need this extra layer. The making of potions and poultices with all the obvious research into the herbs and plants used just made those sections tedious.

There were some huge errors of judgement : the sex scene in the apple store which had the apples jumping and rotating in synch with the sexual thrusting was ludicrous, and the story of the flea completely baffled me : we know the arbitrary nature of how disease can be passed on, so what was to be gained from that lengthy passage? Why, when Shakespeare returns to Stratford shortly after his son dies, does O'Farrell have him banging on the door, when, as is shown later, he is able to lift the latch to allow himself into his own house? This is obviously only for effect, but it was another way in which her decisions took me out of the story.

I read to the end, as I tend to do unless a book is truly terrible, but for me it was a huge opportunity missed. Maybe O'Farrell had been nurturing this project for far too long and was loathe to leave out many of the things she had long considered, but the book would have benefited from a far leaner approach. Its wordiness smothered it.

I'm adding this after many months to say that my original granting of two stars has been downgraded to one, because rather than improving in my memory, it has curdled and turned rancid.
There is so much wrong with this book and to make it worse, friends whose taste I'm usually in tune with love this book. For causing that wedge, Maggie, I cannot forgive you. ...more "

Sep 18, 2024 04:41PM · see review