Medium – Audiobook
About the Book – Agnes settles with her playwright husband and their children, Susanna, Judith and Hamnet, in the house next door to his parents, in Elizabethan Stratford-Upon-Avon. Agnes is a woman who is feared as much as she is loved – she has gifts of healing and also of foresight, and she can see glimpses of the future as it comes to ensnare her and her family. In 1596, the unthinkable happens, and their beloved son, Hamnet, dies of the plague. Four years later, the playwright writes one of his most famous plays, Hamlet, about a father who has lost his beloved son. The book explores the life of Hamnet himself as well as his mother and father, whose marriage is marred by the loss of a child.
My Rating – 4/5
My Thoughts – There are lots of amazing things about this book. I am in awe of Maggie O’Farrell’s ability to write descriptively – she made everything so entirely real and touchable, especially at the beginning of the book. The settings and characters are created beautifully and you get such a feeling of them actually being living, breathing people and places that the book kind of sucks you in. Unpopular opinion, but I do think that the author runs out of steam in the second half of the book. The book is set out in an interesting way – the first part skips between the ‘present day’ with Hamnet discovering that his sister Judith has the plague, and his father and mother’s love story in alternate chapters. The second part is one long chapter set after Hamnet’s death, discussing how the family deal with the aftermath of their loss. It’s touching and moving, but doesn’t quite have the descriptive power of the first part of the book.
The characters are interesting. Agnes Hathaway is amazing, and soon became my favourite character in the book. She is strong and brave, and has this deep knowledge of the earth and of human nature which is really attractive. Her husband is never named in person (although we all know that it’s William Shakespeare!) and I quite like that as it means that he never overshadows the rest of the narrative. Some of the incidental characters, like Agnes’s brother Bartholomew, are excellent, and the author is able to make a lot of a series of unknown characters. I would recommend this book, but I don’t think I would have been able to ‘read’ it in print form – I really enjoyed the audiobook!
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