Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell was our book club book for the month. Generally speaking, this went over quite well with my book club members. I was much more on the fence.

This is an intergenerational tale of Shakespeare and his family. We watch him as he grows up, marries, and has children and then the pestilence hits and their family will never be the same. 

I thought this was quite overwritten at times. Someone in Goodreads talked about the "rule of threes" in this book and it was truly accurate. O'Farrell constantly uses descriptors in groupings of three and once this tic is pointed out to you, you'll never be able to read it the same way again. Consider the following paragraph randomly chosen by me:

She brings a honeycomb out of the skep and squats to examine it. Its surface is covered, teeming, with something that appears to be one moving entity: brown, banded with gold, wings shaped like tiny hearts. It is hundreds of bees, crowded together, clinging to their comb, their prize, their work. (page 16, emphasis mine)

I just don't enjoy this style of writing, although my book club members really enjoyed how immersive they found it, so my experience may not be your experience. 

I also found the whole book kind of chilly, like I was not really getting to know the characters. For example, one character has a kestrel that she's raised since it was a chick and when she moves into town, the kestrel is left behind and there's no sort of reaction from the character about losing a beloved pet. The kestrel never appears again. I thought that what Farrell most described was setting and physical movement and that was at the expense of getting to know characters.

Probably more than that, though, is that the depictions of domestic violence in this book were brutal and graphic. I was not expecting that and really struggled with the first third of the book. Those depictions were less overt as the book went on.  

There is a section in which O'Farrell writes a chapter about a flea that has the plague and how it is transported from one person/animal to another and that chapter is SO GOOD.  

Did I enjoy reading this book? Not really. Did other members of my book club? Yes. 

3/5 stars

Lines of notes:

He carried within him, always, the sensation of his father's calloused hand enclosing the soft skin of his upper arm, the inescapable grip that kept him there so his father could rain down blows with his other, stronger hand. The shock of a slap landing, sudden and sharp, from above; the flensing sting of a wooden instrument on the back of the legs. How hard were the bones in the hand of an adult, how tender and soft the flesh of a child, how easy to bend and strain those young, unfinished bones. The doused, drenched feeling of a fury, of impotent humiliation, in the long minutes of a beating. (page 28)

I don't need this in my life. I really don't.

She learnt the advantages of invisibility, how to pass through a room without drawing notice. (page 45)

More domestic violence material that honestly sent me spiraling for a few days.

She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down is she is to be married. (page 49)

So much abuse.

She is nearly fourteen. Everything - the sight of the pots stacked on the table, the herbs and flowers tied to the rafters, her sister's corn doll on a cushion, the jug set by the hearth - provokes her in a profound and fathomless irritation. (page 52)

There are a few moments of levity in this book and this one made me chuckle out loud.

It is a damp, heavy, acrid scent, like food gone off or unaired linen. She has never smelt it before. If it had a colour, it would be greyish green. (page 153)

Interesting little description of synesthesia. 

He cuts feather after feather into quills, but not is quite right, he says. One is too long, another too short, a third too thin for his fingers. They split or scratch the page or blur and spot. Is it too much to ask for a man to have a working quill? (page 159)

This also made me laugh out loud. My husband recently bought a new pencil sharpener for our house because his travel sharpener didn't cut at the same angle as his school sharpener. There were a few days when the talk of pencil sharpeners in our house nearly drove me insane. 

Things I looked up:

fenland (page 26) - Marshy area found mostly in low-lying land in eastern England. I had in my mind that a fen was a dry place, but I was obviously wrong.

whittawer (page 26, among others) - A person who converts skins into white leather, a tawer.

factotum (page 30) - An employee who does all kinds of work.

odure (page 52) - Filth, dirt, rubbish, excrement. Sounds lovely.

fossick (page 106) - Rummage or search. This is a good word. I shall use it a lot.

millefiori (page 140, among others) - A type of glassware characterized by a flowerlike pattern. This was actually explained in the book, but I wanted to see photos.

You can buy vintage beads on Etsy!

skep (page 275) - A straw or wicker beehive.