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Hamnet
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a luminous portrait of a marriage, a family ravaged by grief, and a boy whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time. • “Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you." —The Boston Globe
England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.
A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
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Reviews
Excellent book, fantastic character development, a story of grief shared by two parents, with an ending you will not anticipate.
By Pharmawoman2
I have long known the story of how Hamnet inspired his father’s work but to see it brought to the page was beautiful. This book reads as a supernatural thriller, you know what’s going to happen because like Shakespeare’s works the tragedy is at the heart of the play but still you wait to see how it all is going to come together. A beautiful book. I very much enjoyed reading it.
By TrooperCam
Beautiful, melodic prose and mind numbing detail drag down the narrative transforming what might have been a riveting, moving historical novel into a tedious tale.
By FreethinkerX
Interesting show of what real tragedy is and how grief leads people to turn on each other. The historical context is amazing.
By CS Walter
I thought the concept of this book — a story of Shakespeare’s marriage from the perspective of Anne (Agnes) interesting. It’s really Anne’s story and only focuses on their courtship and the birth of their children and the death of Hamnet. But so little happens and there is no suspense because the ending is apparent from the beginning. Just a complete snoozefest.
By Ist22214