- Maggie O'Farrell has written an enormously satisfying and heartbreaking novel, a captivating story of Shakespeare's wife Agnes and her independence and power. It's beautifully written and very sad.
- Hamnet, or Hamlet, is their twin boy who died from the plague at the age of eleven. His twin is Judith. The older first child is Susanna.
- Interestingly Will Shakespeare is never named. He's the ‘husband’ or ‘lad’ or ‘Latin boy’. His father John is a harsh and physically abusive bully, and there are hints of a very difficult childhood.
- The detail O'Farrell provides of domestic and community life in 16th century England brings the village community vividly to life. It's a tight, agricultural economy where there are no secrets. They all know each other and their daily interactions enable the pestilence to spread rapidly. Of course the health and medical practices are primitive, yet they are natural and real. This is very much a domestic drama. The stories that start and take hold in villages, developing into mythologies, become powerful.
- Agnes’s brother Bartholomew is the exact opposite of her husband - huge in size and a farmer. He is not a fan of the of his brother-in-law. ‘A man needs work...proper work. He is all head, that one...with not much sense’. There is enormous tension in the wider family. Both Agnes and 'the husband' are viewed as strange, unsupportive and anti-family.
- O’Farrell has an incredible ability to build drama and tension through her masterful control of pace. Agnes's experience of childbirth is powerfully told in intricate and incredible detail. As is the ugly process of death. The indescribable grief is profound and so deeply explored in all its iterations.
- In fact in these Elizabethan times death is everywhere. It's a close companion.
- The father, with Agnes's support, realises he must escape to London to pursue his creative passions and ambitions, otherwise he will sink into a severe and disabling depression. His career takes off. He concentrates initially on histories and comedies, but four years after the death of his son he writes one of his greatest plays, Hamlet.
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