Fiction Book Club

Please join us for a discussion of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell on Tuesday December 20th at 7:30 p.m.

Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet is both a brilliant re-creation of the lives of William Shakespeare and his family in late 16th-century Stratford-upon-Avon and an emotionally intense account of the death of the dramatist's young son and its painful aftermath.

Told mostly through the eyes of Shakespeare's wife, herbalist and clairvoyant Agnes (known to history as Anne Hathaway), Hamnet shifts between the early 1580s, when she and William meet as he's tutoring her stepsiblings on their farm outside Stratford, and 1596, when the couple resides in a small apartment next to her in-laws' house. William struggles to escape his overbearing father and the family's glove-making business to pursue his writing career. O'Farrell excels at evoking the essence of the Shakespeares' daily lives in Stratford, from the claustrophobia of the family's dwelling to the beauty of Agnes' beloved forest, where she gathers plants to fashion her potions. But in addition to getting all the details right, O'Farrell succeeds in creating psychologically acute portraits of characters living at a distance of more than 400 years. Graceful and moving, Hamnet is a triumph of literary and historical fiction.

Copies of the book are available on Libby and may also be reserved for pickup at the library.