Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

What a beautiful and devastating book.

I kept hearing how good this book was, but of course was wary due to the subject matter. It is not a spoiler to say this is about love, family, a mother's fierce love and heavy guilt, and the death of a child. But we learn so much about the family and the times and the WRITING - omgosh y'all, the writing is absolutely beautiful. I felt like I was in Stratford, I could smell the horses and feel the scalding water for laundry and hear the creaks of the stairs.

"A breeze slips invisibly, insistently through the streets, like a burglar seeking an entrance. It plays with the tops of the trees, tipping them one way, then the other. It shivers inside the church bell, making the brass vibrate with a single low note. It ruffles the feathers of the lonely owl, sitting on a rooftop near the church. It trembles a loose casement a few doors along, making the people inside turn over in their beds, their dreams intruded upon by images of shaking bones, of nearing footsteps, of drumming hoofs."

So descriptive and atmospheric and heartfelt! The passages describing the parents' grief in the months after their child's death will tear out your heart. So well done, fractured, real. But I did not cry with this one, although several have said to have Kleenex nearby. I knew it was coming, and that helped. AND, that grief comes more towards the end of the book - there is so much more here than just the death in the story. This is a story of a marriage, of two people who come from dysfunctional families and find their way to, away from, and hopefully back to each other. It is the story of the twin left behind. Of a nameless playwright in England in the late 1500's (yes, THAT playwright) struggling to find his place away from his abusive father and hopeless life. I loved that he remained nameless throughout the novel, because this story was about Agnes, his wife. The one left behind when he goes to London and finally finds the stage. The one who knows things about people, who knows she will have two children and yet births three, who knows the man down the lane will be gone from sickness by the end of the year. The girl from the forest who is the healer. The one who could not save her own child.

I had read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox several years ago by this author (audio version actually) and did not really like that story, or that ending. THIS book makes me want to be a Maggie O'Farrell completist. Or maybe I will stop with this one - perfection.