O’Farrell’s novel isn’t only about grief - or not any more than “Hamlet” is. Not long after losing his son, William wrote “The Tragedy of Hamlet,” a play about the depths of grief and the impossible quest for justice. Elizabethan naming conventions were loose: Anne/Agnes/Annis could all be names for the same person, as could Hamnet/Hamlet. Her child, racked with grief.” There’s the rub, as William Shakespeare wrote in “ Hamlet.” A parent who is not alone in grief must also bear the grief of her family.Ībout that family, whose surname we never learn: a brief introductory explanation reminds us that Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, lost a son named Hamnet to the bubonic plague. She can bear separation, sickness, blows, birth, deprivation, hunger, unfairness, seclusions but not this: her child, looking down at her dead twin. The author, whose memoir “ I Am, I Am, I Am” covered the near-death experiences of herself and her ailing daughter, understands the parental terror of a child’s suffering.Īfter Hamnet dies, his twin sister Judith asks, “Will he never come back?” It is then that her mother, Agnes, first sobs, finding “she can bear anything except her child’s pain. But its core subject is the kind of unchecked, ravaging despair that follows the death of a child. Maggie O’Farrell’s eighth novel, “ Hamnet,” is nominally a work of historical fiction. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Hamlet book