historical fiction
Hamnet is a fictional imagining of William Shakespeare’s family life
centering around his wife and children.
This novel is so beautifully written by Maggie O’Farrell.
Usually if I’m noticing beautiful writing it means that the author is
providing more description, and less story content, than I prefer. And, yes, O’Farrell
is guilty here of being overly wordy. However, the telling of this story is so
well-crafted that I don’t hold her wordiness against her. In fact, she has a
habit of listing multiple examples of the same idea sequentially—each with
different words/phrases. It serves to
emphasize the internal acceptance of the characters’ realizations/observations. But I still wonder if it was also the author
considering multiple ways to say the same things and, instead of selecting one
or two and discarding the rest, choosing to leave them all in there. I was fascinated and, instead of being bored
with the redundancy, enjoyed the many ways she was able to describe this world.
I truly appreciated her writing style. Considering that the novel is about one
of the most famous writers of all time, the thoughtful usage of the English
language seems appropriate.
It is fictional, based on a general framework of facts, but
the story feels so real and believable. The emotions were deeply felt,
especially the heartbreak around the death of Hamnet. The characters were
well-drawn and the historical perspective felt genuine. I did not love the way
the author jumped around the timeline without clearly labeling the timeframe of
the chapter ahead. As an audiobook
listener, this was confusing at times. But if you are interested in learning
more about Shakespeare or life in England in the 16th century, I
recommend it!
Aside from the lack of time indexing, audiobook narrator Ell Potter and her near-perfect voice acting drew me into this very atmospheric
novel. I give her an A.
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