Hamnet

 

HAMNET
A Novel of the Plague
By Maggie O’Farrell

“Hamnet” is an exploration of marriage and grief written into the silent opacities of a life that is at once extremely famous and profoundly obscure.

Countless scholars have combed through Elizabethan England’s parish and court records looking for traces of William Shakespeare. But what we know for sure, if set down unvarnished by learned and often fascinating speculation, would barely make a slender monograph. As William Styron once wrote, the historical novelist works best when fed on short rations. The rations at Maggie O’Farrell’s disposal are scant but tasty, just the kind of morsels to nourish an empathetic imagination.

This is a beautifully written story that deals with grief and channels what life might have been like in Elizabethan England.

I listened to it on Audible.com, and the reading is clear and compelling.

NY Times Book Review.