This book isn't so much about Hamnet as it is about his mother. And so I can't help but think about that alternate universe where The Princess Diaries (2001) flopped at the box office and this book is titled

Anne Hathaway

—

Hamnet is a good book. But It's a bit of a downer.

Which is maybe unfair of me to say. Because Hamnet never pretends to be anything else. This is a book about the death of a child and its impact on the family that loved him. Grief is the point. And so this review is me eating a tin of salted peanuts and then going on a legume review website and complaining about how these particular peanuts have too much salt.

And I'm proud of it.

Because Hamnet, for all its beautiful writing, is salted peanuts with too much salt.

Hamnet doesn't dance around the role its titular character will play. The historical note is quite succinct:

In the 1580's, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three Children, Susanna then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins.

The boy Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven.

Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.

And herein lies my difficulty with this book: The text is never not in mourning. A black shroud hangs over the proceeding.

Inherently, this shouldn't be a problem. After all, Shakespeare loves to spoil his plays. You've got to let the cheap seats know that blood is coming otherwise they might not slog through the bloodless poetry. Romeo and Juliet is not diminished because the sixth line of the play leaves no ambiguity: "A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life".

But Romeo and Juliet does something very important: it forgets the tragedy. It's a razzle-dazzle of romantic charisma that presents a persuasive case for the immediacy of love. Yes, I know their deaths (and my own) are coming, but the two-hours' traffic is so much fun I can almost convince myself that it won't happen. I don't want it to happen. I need these star crossed lovers to survive until they become safe in the unwritten eternity.

But it doesn't matter how much I want the ending to change— it never does. It's a sad song, but there are moments of joy that make me want to sing it anyway.

Hamnet never escapes its historical note. "The boy Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven." looms over every paragraph. Each vignette feels consciously aware that it's a tragedy. Before Hamnet is even born, his death weighs upon the narrator. The proceedings may be happy but the tone is somber. Tiny moments of levity are crushed beneath unending waves of sadness. There was no joy for me to mourn. Instead of praying for another stolen hour, I found myself rooting for Hamnet's prompt demise. At least then it's something that is instead of something that will be.

Maggie O'Farrell is an extremely talented writer. She calls forth line after evocative line about the consumptive maw of grief. She's almost too good at her job. Because the sadness feels real. But it also feels sad. There are only so many ways to describe a character as broken and hollow before things start to get a bit dull. That's true to life, because grief is boring. But it does not make an interesting book, because grief is boring.

One day, devastation will walk into my life. And I will grieve like I've never grieved before. And when that day comes I might be grateful for the company that Maggie O'Farrell's prose can provide. But that day is not today.

—
Hamnet starts as a piece of subversive Shakespeare literature. This Shakespeare is not a poetic genius, he's just a bad husband who wrote some bawdy plays. It's a book about his family. Well, until the ending. Which revels in the genius of Shakespeare to write plays about emotions that can't be spoken aloud. Which is a weird ending to a somber book. Isn't that exactly what happens in Shakespere in Love (1998)?

Should have been called Shakespeare in Loss