I personally really enjoyed this book. O’Farrell captures Shakespeare’s tone in a modern way here. I thought Agnes as a character was deeply stirring and resilient. Her emotional journey of love and grief felt extremely REAL to me. The novel’s nonlinear structure added to its depth, shifting between past and present really built a poignant sense of inevitability.

I really enjoyed O’Farrell’s choice to exclude Shakespeare’s name, it felt deliberate in recentering his home life to refer to him as a father and husband. I’ve read other books that do something similar and didn’t think the payoff was good but in this book it felt necessary to remind readers that we are focusing on his life outside theater, those that are historically overshadowed. 

If there’s one word I could use to describe this book it would be lyrical, and I loved that, nothing felt too much for me, every word felt beautiful. But at its core, Hamnet is more an achingly personal story about a mother’s love and loss rather than a lyrical triumph. I believe the focus on grief makes it resonate on an emotional level beyond its historical setting.