Hamnet : : a Novel of the Plague

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 2-week checkout	Express Shelf Fiction / O'Farrell, Maggie	2-week checkout	In transit
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / O'Farrell, Maggie	4-week checkout	In transit
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / O'Farrell, Maggie	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / O'Farrell, Maggie	4-week checkout	Due 05-09-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / O'Farrell, Maggie	4-week checkout	Due 05-15-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / O'Farrell, Maggie	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / O'Farrell, Maggie	4-week checkout	Due 05-05-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 2-week checkout	Express Shelf Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / O'Farrell, Maggie	2-week checkout	Due 05-03-2024

"A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman--a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down--a magnificent departure from one of our most gifted novelists"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A Passionate, Poetic Discovery of Parental Grief submitted by sVfGI7Glt2pz7GZgVB90 on July 29, 2020, 5:43pm Inspired by the true story of Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, who died aged 11. the power of story is in letting it tell itself. There is a brilliant and enthralling segment devoted exclusively to tracing the cause of the spread of the plague ... parallels to the current COVID19 epidemic.

Beautiful writing, tragic story submitted by kirterry on July 30, 2021, 1:36pm The subject - the death of Shakespeare's young son - is grim, but O'Farrell absolutely transports the reader to the middle ages in this enthralling novel.

Very beautifully-written, but very slow-moving submitted by TeacherN on June 15, 2022, 5:46pm I enjoyed this book, but it's extremely slow-moving. Details are drawn out for days. Still, it is a beautiful and moving novel.

slow but gorgeous submitted by cdfine on August 1, 2022, 9:57pm Slow read and took me a little bit to get into it, but the imagery is really beautiful and I love that the word "Shakespeare" is not used even once in the whole book. Definitely a thought-provoking one and not a super light read.

Beautifully written submitted by adimarzo on July 26, 2023, 8:30pm This is a beautifully written novelization of Shakespeare's wife, Agnes, and their children and the death of his young son (the bard himself appears as well but is never referred to by name). Agnes is such a wonderfully developed character. This is a slow burn but so worth the time.