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Hamnet: A novel Audiobook
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(4.50) - 2 listener ratings
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NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you." —The Boston Globe In 1580’s England, during the Black Plague a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman in this “exceptional historical novel” (The New Yorker) and best-selling winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists. Don’t miss Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel, The Marriage Portrait!
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"I really enjoyed this book by Maggie O'Farrell & I definitely be looking for more by her. There's a passage in the book where I was so convinced she had been through the trauma being described. Whether she has or not (and I hope she hasn't) she wrote her way through it with excrutiating conviction. I was there beside her. If this was the only good in the book, and it's not, I would recommend it. The family dynamics in the family of origin of both her and the man (Shakespeare, althrough I don't think he's named) are spelled out with such clarity and detail. "
— SerenaJ (5 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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"[An] exceptional historical novel ”
— New Yorker -
“So gorgeously written that it transports you.”
— Boston Globe -
“A richly drawn and intimate portrait of sixteenth-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death.”
— Washington Post -
“O’Farrell’s wondrous new novel is at once an unsparingly eloquent record of love and grief and a vivid imagining of how a child’s death was transfigured into art.”
— New York Times Book Review
Awards
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BookPage Best Book of the Year
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New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book of the Year
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New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
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New York Times bestseller
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Winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction
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#1 Amazon bestseller
Hamnet Listener Reviews
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" I have always loved Shakespeare's plays but never really thought about the writer himself nor his childhood. This book presents a conception of the times he lived in as well as his possible family circumstances. The narratiion is imaginative, compelling and well worth reading "
— grandmagolfer, 5/1/2021
About Maggie O’Farrell
Maggie O’Farrell is the author of several novels, including her debut novel, After You’d Gone, which won a Betty Trask Award; The Distance between US, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; and The Hand That First Held Mine, winner of the Costa Novel Award. She has worked as the deputy literary editor of the London Independent on Sunday.
About Ell Potter
Ell Potter is a voice talent and audiobook narrator who has won an AudioFile Earphones Award and was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best mystery thriller narration.