Book Club: HAMNET by Maggie O’Farrell

HAMNET is a fictionalized account of the short life of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died of the plague when he was 11 years old. The book won numerous prizes, including the National Book Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. A gripping drama of the conflict between love and destiny, it is a full-bodied characterization and sensitive rendering of intricate family bonds and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes (Shakespeare's wife), a woman intriguingly absent from history.

Maggie O’Farrell is the author of After You’d Gone; My Lover’s Lover; The Distance Between Us; The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox; The Hand That First Held Mine; Instructions for a Heatwave; This Must Be the Place; I Am, I Am, I Am. She is the recipient of multiple literary awards.