Jackie's Recommendations: Historical Fiction
The opportunity to lose myself in some historical fiction and to be transported back to the time of Shakespeare seemed irresistible to me. I was excited to read Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel, Hamnet, in which she reimagines the life and death of Shakespeare’s only son, whose tragic, somewhat elusive character lies at the heart of the story. The book is a beautifully written account of the impact his death has on his mother, on his father (the unnamed playwright, who goes on to write his celebrated play Hamlet just four years later), and on his twin sister Judith.
In the first two-thirds of the book, we move between two narratives: the courtship and marriage of Agnes (Anne) and the young Latin tutor, and the tense, devastating account of Hamnet’s frantic search for his mother and grandparents while his sister lies ill with the plague in an upstairs room at their house in Stratford-on-Avon. The depictions of the town are wonderfully evocative of the sights, sounds and smells of Elizabethan England. It is easy to imagine the buildings which many of us will have had a chance to visit and which O’Farrell conjures for us in vibrant detail.
The character of Agnes emerges from these pages as a woman of great strength and deep intuition. She is regarded with some suspicion and even derision by the people of Stratford for her strange psychic abilities, but her skill in the use of medicinal herbs (reminiscent of Ophelia in Hamlet and her speech in her madness: ‘There’s rue for you. And here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace a Sundays…)’draws the townsfolk to her. In fact, it is the women in the story who come across to us most vividly, and their solidarity in times of grief is deeply memorable.
O’Farrell’s portrayal of a marriage and family life altered profoundly by grief and separation, while Hamnet’s father, a shadowy figure, pursues his theatrical career in London, is sensitive and movingly written. The great humanity which lies at the heart of the novel is something which will stay with me for a long time and I will definitely be returning to this book.