The reviews that herald O'Farrall as a genius for this novel were not exaggerating, the writing and prose in
Hamnet was exquisite and haunting. Although I initially had difficulty getting into the flow of the book and story, it is easy to hang onto O'Farrall's every word by the time I reached a fourth of the way in. Every word feels carefully chosen and constructed, building a story that feels very fleshed out and well-thought out. Although I can see how Agnes can feel like a manic pixie dream girl and her husband is obviously kind of annoying at times, they feel distinctly human and the children are similarly so. My favorite character may be Eliza, who felt like a parallel of Judith at times. I enjoyed how O'Farrall easily elaborated on each family member's experiences and individual grief, for whoever they were grieving, for Eliza it was Anne, for Agnes it was her husband's presence, and for Judith, her twin. I loved how imaginative this story was, obviously using Shakespeare as a side character and shining the spotlight on his family, who were very much real people and whose stories deserve treatment as such, not to forever be vaguely forgotten.
Overall, this novel was an almost uncomfortably close study of grief and how it affects people, on an individual level. I felt every emotion and high and low and painful remembrance of what had been forever lost very vividly, especially in the second book. It’s difficult to imagine the vastness and depth of the suffering families experienced during the plague, it's easy to forget how we take healthcare and science for granted nowadays. The only qualm I had was that I wished the ending was tied up a bit more neatly, or with more conviction. But this may have been a stylistic choice, because a parent and family's grief never quite ends like the end of a novel, which may have been attempted to been communicated through the ending that felt quite unresolved or open-ended.
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