Hamnet

Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, Hamnet & Judith is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

"Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life... here is a novel... so gorgeously written that it transports you."  -  The Boston Globe

England, 1580. A young Latin tutor - penniless, bullied by a violent father - falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman: a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague.

"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 novel is at once about the transfiguration of life into art... and at the same time, it is a master class in how she, herself, does it... There is a poetic cadence to her writing and a lushness in her descriptions of the natural world."  -  Geraldine Brooks, The New York Times Book Review

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history. Hamnet & Judith is mesmerizing and seductive - an impossible-to-put-down novel from one of our most gifted writers.