Hamnet
By Maggie O' Farrell
My Rating 5/5 stars
"Some days, the streets are full of Hamnets. They walk about. They jump and run. They jostle each other. They walk towards her, they walk away from her, they disappear around corners.
Somedays she doesn't go out at all."
The streets are full of Hamnets because everywhere Agnes looks, she hopes to find her son Hamnet who is no more. Her young child taken away by pestilence because she thinks she wasn't looking closely or carefully enough. She regrets this each waking moment after and wishes she could have undone what the destiny brought for her boy.
Human grief is difficult to put into words. Mourning the death of a loved one and trying to live with that loss, each day, every day for the rest of life, is something the human mind doesn't come easy to terms with.
The despair looms large, like the howling of wind on a dark stormy night.
It birthes the pain of not being able to hold the departed loved ones in sight, of not finding them in the places that bear their memories, of being saddened when a touch of their clothes doesn't retrieve familiar warmth.
Farrell weaves that pain in the narrative, drawing the reader in with each tear shed, every moment of sadness and each juncture of agony so that reader shares the grief of Agnes, the bewilderment of Hamnet's sister Judith and the pain of his father.
She traverses from the mind of Agnes to that of Judith or Susanna or Mary effortlessly and gives a glimpse into their thoughts, fears and their apprehensions. However when it comes to Hamnet's father, the playwright, she chooses to depict it through his play as seen by Agnes.
The experience is overwhelming, to say the least.
In attempting to write Hamnet, Farrell has tried to write the story of family life of Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet after his son's death.
The story however, is universally of grief.
Somedays she doesn't go out at all."
The streets are full of Hamnets because everywhere Agnes looks, she hopes to find her son Hamnet who is no more. Her young child taken away by pestilence because she thinks she wasn't looking closely or carefully enough. She regrets this each waking moment after and wishes she could have undone what the destiny brought for her boy.
Human grief is difficult to put into words. Mourning the death of a loved one and trying to live with that loss, each day, every day for the rest of life, is something the human mind doesn't come easy to terms with.
The despair looms large, like the howling of wind on a dark stormy night.
It birthes the pain of not being able to hold the departed loved ones in sight, of not finding them in the places that bear their memories, of being saddened when a touch of their clothes doesn't retrieve familiar warmth.
Farrell weaves that pain in the narrative, drawing the reader in with each tear shed, every moment of sadness and each juncture of agony so that reader shares the grief of Agnes, the bewilderment of Hamnet's sister Judith and the pain of his father.
She traverses from the mind of Agnes to that of Judith or Susanna or Mary effortlessly and gives a glimpse into their thoughts, fears and their apprehensions. However when it comes to Hamnet's father, the playwright, she chooses to depict it through his play as seen by Agnes.
The experience is overwhelming, to say the least.
In attempting to write Hamnet, Farrell has tried to write the story of family life of Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet after his son's death.
The story however, is universally of grief.
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