This book can be found here.
“She cannot understand it. She, who can hear the dead,
the unspoken, the unknown, who can touch a person and listen to the creep of
disease along the veins, can sense the dark velvet press of a tumour on a lung
or a liver, can read a person’s eye and heart like some can read a book. She
cannot find, she cannot locate the spirit of her own child.”
[The sibling however] “hears [them] in the swish of a
broom against the floor…in the winged dip of a bird over the wall…in the shake
of a pony’s mane, in the smattering of hail against the pane, in the wind
reaching its arm down the chimney, in the rustle of the rushes that make up …
the … den’s roof.” p. 298
The book opens with Hamnet finding his sister, Judith, ill
in bed and when he looks for the rest of the crowded household, no-one is home.
His father is away in London, his mother in the fields at her old home farm
where she grows medicinal plants. His grandparents and other household members
are out on various errands in Stratford.
The book is based on Shakespeare’s family of which very
little is known. What is known has been taken and woven into a beautiful story
of love and loss. A story of the Latin tutor, giving lessons to pay off his
father’s debts and meeting his future wife; a strong and individual woman with
gifts of her own. A story of parents whose connection is very strong but is
sorely tested by the loss of a child. A story of the love between twin
children. The story does not feature Shakespeare’s life in the theatre world
which stays mostly on the sidelines: the meat of this story is how people deal
individually and together with their sorrow.
And there is an interesting side story on how the plague
came to Stratford via some enterprising fleas and the thriving trade with the
Mediterranean ports. And some beautiful descriptions; e.g. kittens with “faces
like pansies and soft pads on their paws”. All the senses are engaged as O’Farrell
takes us to bedrooms, kitchens, workrooms and fields.
I have liked anything I have read by Maggie O’Farrell but
she lifts to another level here. Her prose is beautiful, luminous and enthralling.
Her characters are complete people with strengths and weaknesses, bluster and
frailties. Her speculation based on such few facts and a lot of research into
the period is believable. Her people spring off the page as if you had just
passed the time of day with them in the marketplace on your way to buy gloves
from John Shakespeare.
This is a very readable and engaging book. I am happy to
learn it has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020.
-- Wendy
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