I started to lose faith in the writing when O'Farrell told us 5 times in one paragraph that Hamnet and Judith were twins. 

In almost every way this seemed like a book I would like - the setting, the themes, a hint of the bard. I was convinced I would love it. But the writing! It was overwrought, repetitive, drowning in metaphors in a way that we're supposed to think is beautiful but reads to me like the scene in Elf where Buddy pours syrup on top of the candy-topped spaghetti breakfast he has made. Too much. I love beautiful, lyrical writing (and novels written by poets especially), but there is still a level of control required to pull off lyrical writing that I did not find in Hamnet. The third person present perspective held me at a distance that made it hard to connect with the story. Characters felt more like archetypes than real people. I was ready to be destroyed by this book, and I was, just not in the way I anticipated. There are other books in the world that can give me what I was looking for here (an exploration of grief and parenthood). And if I want historical fiction, I think I'll stick with Hilary Mantel (I know her writing bothers people too, so it's fully a matter of preference. I'll take her raw, sometimes baffling prose over this any day).