Maggie O'Farrell has done it again with this bold and emotional imagining of the Bard's family in Stratford. We are there in 1580's, up close and personal with the characters, the smells and sounds of the time. We hear how Hamnet's mother and father met, there are seven fabulous pages in the apple store with the kestrel. And it is Agnes whose story we follow most closely. Her husband is more on the periphery as he settles in London.
Agnes is a wonderful character, her early life is another wonderful piece. Her husband's upbringing is darker yet more affluent. We rush cleverly backwards and forwards to see him becoming a young Latin tutor, indeed the pace of the novel is quite extraordinary, given this is a human drama with limited plot. One review said it was "frustratingly slow" but I thought it ran at a gallop.
There are some beautiful domestic scenes, I cannot remember ever before reading a detailed account of giving birth, here we have it twice. Unforgettable. Then illness and death are never far away. Later in the book, the personalities of the young daughters of Agnes (Susanna and Judith) are brilliantly described. And then the ending is something else. I hardly ever read historical novels, but in the hands of this author, we feel exactly what it was like to live in those days.
On a personal note, it struck a chord when the Latin tutor rehearsed his students with recitations. I remember my father reciting tenses in alphabetical order starting with "Amo, Amas, Amat".
SPOILER ALERT
The final part of the book is outstanding. The descriptions of London, as Agnes and her brother make their way through on horseback, and finding, in the playhouse, how her husband has brought Hamnet "back to life" when Hamlet meets his father's ghost. "He is both alive and dead".
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