When she told them about Hamnet, they thought she was making him up. When he read the first draft of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006) he said: ‘You need to rewrite half of it.’ And I did feel annoyed – we had a slightly frosty dinner. But an indignation was growing in O’Farrell that would prove stronger than doubt or mirth – not about Shakespeare but about his wife, Anne Hathaway (also known as Agnes). And Hamnet? She talks freely about difficult subjects but swerves from even tame questions that close in on her character. When William Shakespeare sat down to write "Hamlet," his son - his only son, Hamnet - was some 4 years dead. And I did it in about 15-minute bursts. One of the stumbling blocks to writing the novel was the feeling of presumption about characterising a genius (she describes herself as an Anthony Burgess fan but thinks his novel about Shakespeare, Nothing Like the Sun, does not come off). But mightn’t writing be seen as a form of risk-taking? 2. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. And we had, actually, this really ancient, dilapidated potting shed. You know, I think that it is obviously - as you were saying, it is every parent's worst nightmare. It covered the time in which I was writing the novel. I will have your pain. In Shakespeare’s time, Hamlet and Hamnet were, according to the critic Steven Greenblatt in the New York Review of Books, the same name. England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. William Shakespeare's name is never used in Hamnet — a conspicuous absence around which Maggie O'Farrell forms her richly imaginative narrative. Why not? O'FARRELL: Yeah. (SOUNDBITE OF KAREN O AND THE KIDS SONG, "HIDEAWAY"). How did - I mean, how did you do that? “Every stammerer has a collection of sounds they can’t start off on and one of mine was ‘M’.” And that is not easy when your name is Maggie. I am waiting as she pushes open the cafe door in a fast-forward flurry. Here. As an adult, she has lived in Hong Kong (a year working for a computer magazine) and London (as an arts journalist). As brave? She put on a black shirt, with a ruffled paper collar, an inky cloak made out of a skirt, her Doc Martens and cheeky shorts over black leggings. And Hamnet? Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian, Maggie O’Farrell: ‘Having to bury a child must be unlike anything else’, hen the novelist Maggie O’Farrell was 16, she was invited to a fancy-dress party and knew at once who to be. How can we equip them to cope?” About her own future, she volunteers nothing. And so I call him - you know, he's always he. “I want Brexit not to have happened. Maggie O'Farrell, thank you. And I actually sat in there and wrote those scenes. Not only have our kids got to face the climate emergency but what’s going to happen to Britain? I started to feel anger about how domestic life is diminished: people want to believe Shakespeare appeared in London fully formed, that he did not have a domestic life.”. We sit down at the kitchen table, and O’Farrell explains the book’s beginnings when she was at Cambridge University studying English (having got in from a comprehensive school in North Berwick): “At that time, studying English was frustrating because it was all about post-Marxist readings – you were several removes from the text.” But it was through reading biographies of Shakespeare that she learned of Hamnet’s existence. I realised when I wrote my memoir, a memoir – the indefinite article is better – it’s only when you finish a book that you understand why you’ve written it. There was, she was sure, a novel in it. “Routine” and “organisation” are alien to her. It reads like a fairytale rooted in heartbreaking reality – there is no magic with which to save a child. When you’re sitting at your computer, immersed in the world you’ve created, and have to write: ‘William Shakespeare had his breakfast…’ it’s impossible not to think: I’m an eejit. She had become obsessed with Hamlet: “He had got under my skin. And I don't know. And now, here it is: Hamnet – the novel of her career. It seems so unlikely it has survived, that we can walk through it and into the room in which he was born, the room in which he ate. She will not say whether she craves solitude or discuss her intuitions and ducks giving an account of her working day although, to be fair, this might be because she does not have one. O'FARRELL: (Reading) She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thought like fishing lines towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they're doing, how they fare. His brief and precious life was, O’Farrell thinks, more significant than literary historians suppose. “I found this an extraordinary assumption,” she says. When I looked at the “best books of the year” lists, Hamnet struck me as one of the least depressing. O’Farrell went to Stratford-upon-Avon to research the book: “What’s astonishing at Shakespeare’s birthplace in Henley Street is that, for all his incredible output, he has left a very scant paper trail, so to be able to walk into that house is astonishing. Are you sure?’ And I said: ‘Yes, I’m absolutely positive.’ And I thought: if they don’t know, then maybe quite a lot of people don’t know.”. “Whenever they talked about his death, it would be followed by several paragraphs about infant mortality in the late 16th century.” The authors would explain that infant mortality was commonplace and imply that parents barely reacted when their children died. A later novel, The Hand That First Held Mine, won the 2010 Costa Novel Award.She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award – for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. If there’s a hierarchy of bravery, writers are somewhere near the bottom.”. KELLY: That's Maggie O'Farrell. KELLY: I mean, what else do we actually know about the link between Hamnet the boy and "Hamlet" the play? The daughter of an economist, she grew up with her mother and two sisters in Wales and Scotland. “No. I needed people in a sense to forget who he is. She was held up by a machete-wielding man in Chile. And that required you to imagine what it would be like to lose a child and the guilt and the fury and the grief that would follow. Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, who died aged 11, is the inspiration for Maggie O’Farrell’s remarkable new novel. It is not that Hamnet has never featured on stage or screen: there was Kenneth Branagh’s 2018 film All Is True, written by Ben Elton; a short, one-boy show by Bush Moukarzel; and David Mitchell in The Upstart Crow (also by Elton), mentions Shakespeare’s bereavement. A fictionalised account of the short life of Shakepeare’s son, Hamnet, is a work of profound understanding. Why do you think she chooses not to name him? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Maggie O'Farrell about her … It's so evident to me that the play is a kind of response to the loss of this boy. You know, in one of these big sort of 500-page biographies of Shakespeare, Hamnet is lucky if he gets a mention - maybe two mentions. Central to the story is Anne Hathaway who at age 26 married the young 18-year-old Wil. Look. O'FARRELL: It's my pleasure. You write so beautifully about that in one passage that I wonder if I could get you to read for us. Maggie O'Farrell's new novel confronts a parent's worst nightmare: The loss of a child. He had no trade and was only 18. Over the years, she repeatedly tried to write that novel and almost gave up. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell review – tragic tale of the Latin tutor’s son. I couldn't write a book about a mother who sits down at her child's deathbed and is forced to watch him die and then has to lay him out for burial. It's an honor to be here. KELLY: Because she can't get her head around it, because how could any mother get their head around that you're preparing your son's body for burial? And on it was written one line, and it said, I killed Hamnet today. Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet. She put on a black shirt, with a ruffled paper collar, an inky cloak made out of a skirt, her Doc Martens and cheeky shorts over black leggings. I mean, I am wary about imposing Shakespeare's biography on his work. Germaine Greer’s book, Shakespeare’s Wife, which O’Farrell found “inspirational”, recommends that people stop asking: why did Shakespeare marry her? ISBN-13: 9780525657606 Summary England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. Where is he? You know, it just - even saying it makes me laugh. She never swanks. O’Farrell loves living in Edinburgh but says she has to look after herself carefully when not writing: “My body is not my strong point – there are lots of things I have to do to keep it ticking over.” She is a yoga devotee and in summer swims in a loch outside the city. Maggie O’Farrell at home in Edinburgh. Instead, she tells a story. The cause was not. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 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