Reviews

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

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alixx_thomas's review against another edition

1.0

DNF’d it at 200 pages.

I think I might be in the minority here, but this book was just so boring. I couldn’t bring myself to care even a little bit about what was happening or who the characters were, and I was constantly trying to find ways to put the book down. In the first few pages, I loved how prettily written it is. Don’t get me wrong, I think the author does have skill. But as I continued on, I started to find it incredibly overwritten and this, along with the badly paced lack of a good plot, contributed towards my boredom. How many adjectives can you use to describe one thing? For some reason, everything needed to be done in threes. It became incredibly tedious, and I felt like the author was just trying to show off her writing skills rather than trying to create anything with actual substance. It’s a shame because I wanted to enjoy this book, but I just couldn’t get on with it.

ktbee123's review against another edition

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4.0

Maggie O’Farrell is so uniquely talented at fleshing out tidbits of vague but interesting historical figures into a full-fledged imagining. Both Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait are, on the surface, supposed to be about the excitement of a more singular story (Shakespeare’s son dying of the plague and a young duchess getting murdered by her husband, respectively) even though they are really about the day to day life and enthralling family dynamics of the main characters. I really enjoy the way she flips back and forth with past and present in both until the two timelines meet at the climax.

Now this review has ended up being about both of her novels I’ve read simply because I feel like O’Farrell’s incredible prose takes the forefront over the actual plots of the books themselves. The beauty is in the way the characters describe and navigate their emotions and tribulations rather than what causes them or how they are resolved.

P.S. This fictionalized version of Shakespeare is nothing but a wimpy deadbeat to me and did not deserve the interesting, powerful, and persevering Agnes

lakshmik's review against another edition

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4.0

It’s a beautiful reimagining of Shakespeare’s life and marriage. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I ended up liking it! The prose is elegant but at times excessive. There’s no need to spend several lines lighting a candle, we get it. Worth a listen because the narrator was great and it got me through a lot of driving to and from work.