WINNER OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“O'Farrell has a melodic relationship to language. There is a poetic cadence to her writing and a lushness in her descriptions of the natural world. . . . We can smell the tang of the various new leathers in the glover's workshop, the fragrance of the apples racked a finger-width apart in the winter storage shed. . . . As the book unfolds, it brings its story to a tender and ultimately hopeful conclusion: that even the greatest grief, the most damaged marriage, and most shattered heart might find some solace, some healing.” —Geraldine Brooks, The New York Times Book Review
“Maggie O’Farrell is known for penning the most literary of fiction. And she does not disappoint with this stunning—though sorrowful—outing.” —Toronto Star
“All too timely . . . inspired. . . . [An] exceptional historical novel.” —The New Yorker
“A tour de force. . . . Hamnet vividly captures the life-changing intensity of maternity in its myriad stages—from the pain of childbirth to the unassuageable grief of loss. Fierce emotions and lyrical prose are what we've come to expect of O'Farrell.” —NPR
“[A] portrayal of grief and pain. . . . O’Farrell describes these agonies with such power that Hamnet would resonate at any time.”
—The Guardian
“Miraculous. . . . Brilliant. . . . A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer—or curse . . . . Through the alchemy of her own vision, she has created a moving story about the way loss viciously recalibrates a marriage. . . . A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death.” —The Washington Post
“Magnificent and searing. . . . A family saga so bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection. . . . Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life, about whether he even wrote his own plays, here is a novel that matches him with a woman overwhelmingly more than worthy.” —The Boston Globe
“Superb. . . . O’Farrell’s exquisitely wrought eighth novel proves once again what a very fine writer she is.” —Financial Times
“O'Farrell moves through the family's pain like a master of signs and signals. . . . In Hamnet, art imitates life not to co-opt reality, but to help us bear it.” —Los Angeles Times
“A moving portrait of a mother’s grief. . . . O’Farrell’s prose is characteristically beautiful.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Wholly original, fully engrossing. . . . Agnes is a character for the ages—enigmatic, fully formed and nearly literally bewitching to behold in every scene she's in.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A bold, beautiful, heart-breaking novel. Maggie has taken on both the most famous writer in the world and the mantle of history with effortless grace. In the process she’s written the book of her life. I’m wildly jealous!” —Tracy Chevalier
“What could be more common, over centuries and continents, than the death of a child—and yet Maggie O’Farrell, with her flawless sentences and furious heart, somehow makes it new. This story of remarkable people bereft of their boy will leave you shaking with loss but also the love from which family is spun.” —Emma Donoghue
“Hamnet is a beautiful read, a devastating one, intricate, and breathtakingly imaginative. It will stay with me a long time.” —Rachel Joyce
“A thing of shimmering wonder.” —David Mitchell
“The story of Hamnet Shakespeare has been waiting in the shadows for over four hundred years. Maggie O’Farrell brings it dazzlingly, devastatingly, into the light.” —Kamila Shamsie
“Stunning. The writing is exquisite, immersive and compelling . . . deserves to win prizes.” —Marian Keyes
“Heartstopping. [Hamnet] does for the Shakespeare story what Jean Rhys did for Jane Eyre, inhabiting, enlarging and enriching it in ways that will alter the reader’s view for ever.” —Patrick Gale
“Grief and loss so finely written I could hardly bear to read it.” —Sarah Moss
“Evocative. . . . [Hamnet] is also life-affirming as it suggests ways art can transcend misfortune.” —National Review
“Elliptical, dreamlike. . . . [Hamnet] confirms O’Farrell as an extraordinarily versatile writer, with a profound understanding of the most elemental human bonds—qualities also possessed by a certain former Latin tutor from Stratford.” —The Observer
“A remarkable piece of work. . . . O’Farrell is one of the most surprisingly quiet radicals in fiction.” —The Scotsman
“[O’Farrell is] a writer of rare emotional intelligence whose personal intimations of mortality bear rich fruit in this, her eighth novel.” —Evening Standard
“This artfully paced novel is an anatomy of grief. . . . Just when the novel’s second part seems to be moving to a tragic conclusion, it mounts a stunning redemptive volte-face.” —The Times Literary Supplement
"This striking, painfully lovely novel captures the very nature of grief." —Booklist (starred review)
