FFB: HAMNET. Maggie O'Farrell

 The movie version of this with Paul Mescale and Jessie Buckley will be released at Thanksgiving. 

 

Hamnet, William Shakespeare's only son, died at the age of eleven. HAMNET is Maggie O'Farrell's imaging of the event and the months that followed. In 1580, the Black Death was surging across England. A young Latin tutor, (never named) impregnates a woman several years his senior. Called Agnes in this novel, rather than Anne, she is a woman very much of the land, adept in mixing potions to cure whatever ailed the townsmen of Stratford. The two marry.  

This book is her story rather than her husband's. She bears three children, Hamnet is a twin to Judith, and Suzanne is their elder sister. This is a story of grief, a story of learning to accept living with a husband who is gone much of the time pursuing his writing and stage career. Not until the end of the book does Agnes come to understand what it is her husband is doing in London. This allows her some peace.

There is much about William Shakespeare that is not known, including the exact circumstances of Hamnet's death. Situating it as a result of this plague makes perfect sense.  O'Farrell has taken some of what is known about the man and made it come alive. 

Highly recommended.