There is not enough life, enough air, enough blood for both of them.
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell
Genre: Historical Fiction
About: Agnes has always known things. That woman is with child, that man will not live long... fate whispers to her and is never wrong. When she meets a young, hopeless boy with too many words, she knows he's meant for great things, that she will marry him and they will have two children. But her second child is twins. Three children cannot be, one will die and the family will fall apart.
The Good
This is beautifully written. There's so much detail and life to the characters. We read several different POVs and all of them are rich in detail. When Susanna, as a toddler, imagines the room as a river, her grandmother's needle is a fish slipping in and out of water. In her grandmother's POV that same moment her needlework is getting out of control as she becomes incensed about a discussion going on. Every scene has these beautiful descriptions and similes that transport you with east into the setting. We witness so many big and small moments that truly feel like they have happened or are happening. I loved the switch from past to present. It gives an extra weight to the tragedy as we watch Hamnet desperately trying to save his sister, knowing all the while that he is the one destined for death, and then switch to the past, to his parent's romantic beginnings and their hope of the future.
I particularly loved the backstory given to Agnes. Knowing Shakespeare's plays meddle with Fate and have airs of mysticism, it felt very fitting to pile all of that magic into his wife's side of the family. That Agnes and her mother before her had this special ability to know things. Or that Hamnet wills his own death to save his sister and take her place. These homages didn't feel forced or overly dramatic as they very easily could have done. Instead they made the characters more real, as though we're glimpsing into Shakespeare's inspiration and seeing how his life became layered into his art.
The Bad
There's joy and tension and a forward momentum to the first part of the novel. The second part however is a little over a hundred pages of extended grief. This was thoughtfully and powerfully written, but I didn't find it as compelling. Of course I cried. Of course I kissed and hugged my baby boy and knew that the novel was being effective in what it was doing for me to feel this way. But the pages did feel longer and not as necessary. There was no urgency to the novel after Hamnet died and although I thought the ending was good (I loved that we didn't see any plays throughout until The Play at the end), the pace was a bit too slow after so much build up.
The Somewhat Iffy
I didn't quite understand why Agnes had such a large dowry when her father (a farmer) had three other daughters and four sons to divvy his fortune between. And I feel torn between loving that O'Farrell never mentions William Shakespeare by name, thereby allowing the other characters to breathe and have their story, and finding it distracting that he's only ever mentioned as 'tutor', 'brother', husband', 'father'.
Overall
Exceptional. This is at turns a play, a biography, a dream like fantasy. It's poetic and heartfelt and feels like a piece of history, a story that had to be told.
Comentários