Hamnet (O'Farrell) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Hamnet is an exploration of marriage and grief written… of a life that is at once extremely famous and profoundly obscure.… It is O'Farrell's extended speculation on how Hamnet's death might have fueled the creation of one of his father's greatest plays…. [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.
Geraldine Brooks - New York Times Book Review


Miraculous… brilliant.… A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer—or curse…. [T]hrough the alchemy of her own vision, [O'Farrell] 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
Ron Charles - Washington Post


Magnificent and searing…. A family saga… bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection.…[H]ere is a novel that matches him with a woman overwhelmingly more than worthy.… I nearly drowned at the end of this book…. It would be wise to keep some tissues handy…. So gorgeously written that it transports you from our own plague time right into another and makes you glad to be there.
Boston Globe


All too timely…inspired…. [An] exceptional historical novel.
New Yorker


A tour de force…. Although more than 400 years have unspooled since Hamnet Shakespeare's death, the story O'Farrell weaves in this moving novel is timeless and ever-relevant.… O'Farrell brilliantly turns to historical fiction to confront a parent's worst nightmare: the death of a child.… Fierce emotions and lyrical prose are what we've come to expect of O'Farrell. But with this historical novel she has expanded her repertoire….
NPR


(Starred review)  [A]n outstanding masterpiece…. The book is filled with astonishing, timely passages, such as the plague’s journey to Stratford via a monkey’s flea from Alexandria. This is historical fiction at its best.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) This striking, painfully lovely novel captures the very nature of grief.
Booklist


(Starred review) [O'Farrell's] gifts for full-bodied characterization and sensitive rendering of intricate family bonds are on full display.… A gripping drama of the conflict between love and destiny.
Kirkus Reviews