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To read or not to read, that is the question?

Hamnet is a triumph, a masterpiece and a fantastic work of fiction interwoven with real historical events. I would give 6 stars if I could. If “to read�� is the question then “Oh Yes�� must be the answer.

William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway at 18, she in her mid-twenties. Soon they have a daughter Susanna, followed by twins, a boy and girl, named Hamnet and Judith. Then one of the children dies. This is what we do know about Shakespeare and a very ambitious story for Maggie O’Farell to take on and make her own. The story is wonderfully narrated around the family but particularly Agnes / Anne Hathaway and her role married to her husband William Shakespeare.

The author writes, "two events need to occur in the lives of two separate people, and then these people need to meet." A cabin boy on a ship, unknowingly picks up the infected flea in his red neckerchief and Hamnet's sister Judith eagerly unpacks a parcel delivered to a Stratford seamstress. Their fate is sealed.

Agnes had married for love, but like all great love stories, tragedy threatens to tear them apart with the loss of one of their children and her husband's prolonged absence from their home to find work at the theatres in London.

Agnes is warned, by her mother-in-law, that the newest work by her husband is a play named after their son. Furious she sets off to London to confront him but is surprised to observe the pitiful surroundings he lives in, and not living the lavish lifestyle Agnes had imagined. It is only then she begins to realise the grief and sorrow felt by her husband, after the loss of their child. As Agnes sits in the audience to watch his play, she can see for the first time the tapestry of their lives embroidered with every event and the visions of sorrow and joy using threads skilfully woven to capture the heartache and personal tragedy. To other’s Hamnet is a great play but to Agnes and her husband it is everything that captures their pain and loss on a canvas for all the world to see.

It takes a gifted author to make the story sing from the pages in a way that conjures up such emotions in its readers. Hamnet is one of those books where not a single word should be written or worded differently, it possesses a dream like quality, and entices you as the reader to play your part for Shakespeare is never named as the husband, our imagination takes us there.

This is one of my favourite books this year and possibly ever in this historical period. It is very difficult for a book to move me in this way, but Hamnet hit the right spot and managed to have me choked up at the end. Simply gorgeous, sad, and painful but a remarkable story.