Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell audiobook review – the life and loss of the woman behind the Bard | Books

The jury is still out on the merits of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which arrives in cinemas next month, but there is no arguing with the quality of the source material. Maggie O’Farrell’s lyrical and immersive novel, which won the Women’s prize in 2020, imagines the relationship between William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway, and their grief over the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, from the plague in 1596. The book opens with the young Hamnet realising his twin sister Judith is unwell and searching for an adult to attend to her, while unaware that he is the one who is fatally ill.

Shakespeare – who is never named and instead referred to as “the husband” or “the father” – is depicted not as a literary superstar but a flawed man who is rarely home. The focus is on Hathaway, a free-spirited woman with deep connections to the landscape. The narrative shifts between her childhood, the early years of her marriage and the aftermath of Hamnet’s death, during which Shakespeare writes one of his greatest plays, Hamlet (records state that the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable in those days).

Jessie Buckley, who plays Agnes in the film, is the book’s narrator for this new recording. Her reading is sensitive, almost dreamlike in places, and alive to the hardships endured by Agnes, who is constricted by domesticity, motherhood and her husband’s ambition. But it is in the portrait of death that both O’Farrell and Buckley truly excel. Hamnet is a profoundly humane account of love, loss and a family undone by grief.

Available via Tinder Press, 12hr 54min

Further listening

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A Korean father’s vanishing while swimming in Japan with his young daughter is the jumping off point for Choi’s sprawling Booker-shortlisted novel, which spans five countries and several decades. Eunice Wong reads.

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Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Penguin Audio, 13hr 40min
Gabra Zackman and Therese Plummer read the posthumously published memoir by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim. Powerful and moving, the book affirms Giuffre’s intent to shine a light on the misdeeds of rich and powerful abusers.