Wide variety of genres at Public Library
William Gwin/Reader's Guide
As usual, this reviewer attempts to cover a range of genres so that various readers’ interests may be represented. My writer friend in Atlanta, after reading one of my reviews, affirmed that I am not a “genre snob.” How boring it would be if everyone read the same stuff! So, it is with this installment of the Reader's Guide where again we run the gamut from light, popular fiction to “literature” and anywhere in between.
Maggie O’Farrell, a native of Ireland, who grew up in Wales and Scotland, has been the darling of many book clubs this year with her most recent title, “Hamnet.” The story is set among the plague years of the 1580s in England. Originally, “The Black Death” came to Europe from China in 1340 via the trade routes. It is estimated over the centuries that this plaque, spread by fleas, killed up to 25 million people in Europe, a third of the continent’s population. “Hamnet” focuses on William Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, or “Agnes,” in the novel. Hathaway, eight years older than Shakespeare, whom she married when she was 26 and he 18, had three children with her husband, twins Judith and Hamnet and the oldest daughter, Susanna. Though there is no historical proof of the cause of Hamnet’s death, O’Farrell posits the premature death of Hamnet, at 11, to have been from the plague. Given the paucity of historical records about William Shakespeare’s and Anne Hathaway’s lives, O’Farrell has wide berth to try to imagine their lives in their time. She does this incredibly well, using skillful, sensuous descriptions of town and country, and painting a complex portrait of Agnes as a woman who is attuned with herbal medicines and folkways, and whose sense of intuition guides her to push her husband to go to London where she feels his talents will take wing. It is the premature death of Hamnet (inspiration for one of the most famous plays in the English language, “Hamlet”), which drives Agnes and her husband to grief and despair, resulting in complications to their already distant relationship. For those hoping to gain more insights real or imagined into the bard himself, they will be disappointed, as the novel focuses mainly on the domestic life of Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon and its environs.