Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Hamnet'

Summary

The Book Review Podcast — Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘Hamnet’ (November 28, 2025)

Host: M.J. Franklin (Editor, NYT Book Review)
Guests: Jennifer Harlan (Book Review Editor), Sarah Lyall (Writer at large), Leah Greenblatt (Book Review Editor)
Focus: Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet—its characters, structure, themes of grief, historical context, and recent film adaptation.

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Episode Overview

This episode of the NYT Book Review Podcast dives into Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, prompted by its 2025 film adaptation directed by Chloé Zhao. The panel revisits the celebrated 2020 novel—a historical fiction imagining the life and loss in William Shakespeare’s family, focusing on his son Hamnet and wife Agnes (Anne Hathaway). The discussion covers the novel’s treatment of grief, O’Farrell’s storytelling choices, historical resonances, and the new film interpretation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Set-up and Summary of Hamnet

• Plot: Historical fiction centered on Shakespeare’s family—wife Agnes (a naturalist and herbalist), daughters Susanna and Judith, son Hamnet (Judith’s twin), and an unnamed “playwright” (Shakespeare).
• Historical Basis: Hamnet died at age 11 in 1596 (possibly of plague). Within a few years, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet—the names “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” being interchangeable at the time (05:01).
• Dual Narrative: The novel alternates between Hamnet’s final days and flashbacks to Agnes and Shakespeare’s love story, culminating in Hamnet’s death and the family’s processing of loss (05:01–06:53).
• Universal Themes: “It is a book about a real piece of history, but it’s also a book about a marriage, about parenthood, and about loss and grief—all those great universal themes.” — Jennifer Harlan (06:48)

2. Agnes/Anne Hathaway: Reclaiming a Figure from History

• O’Farrell creates a vivid portrait of Agnes, elevating her from a “historical footnote” to “the beating heart of this family and of this book” (10:43, 23:10).

• Panelists appreciate the proto-feminist reclamation: “His wife has always gotten short shrift in history, I think, and this makes her into a really fantastic character.” — Sarah Lyall (08:41)

• Discussion of her mystical qualities—intuitive, herbalist, possibly supernatural, but also deeply observant and emotionally intelligent (07:10–10:43, 23:10–24:59).

  “While she doesn’t have traditional book education and isn’t literate, she is incredibly intelligent and wise…has this emotional and medical and natural intelligence that really infuses her and the whole book.” — Jennifer Harlan (23:10)

3. Panel Reactions: How Did You Feel About the Book?

• Leah: Mixed—admired the transcendent moments, but notes the trope of mystical, “witchy” women in historical fiction and the lack of flaws in Agnes (09:28, 15:25–19:16).
• Jen: Loved it—deeply moving, absorbing, found more to appreciate with reread; connected personally as a “giant Shakespeare nerd” (10:46, 11:43).
• Sarah: Loved—especially on second reading as “a portrait of a grief…put towards something so beautiful, Shakespeare’s art. It gave me a bit of hope.” (12:44–13:20)
• MJ: “So sad the first time, so sad the second time…also so sad…with the movie. It’s just devastating. But I loved this story, I loved this book.” (11:17)

4. Processing Grief, Loss, and Family Dynamics

• Discussion of historical norms: high child mortality, but the pain remains palpable and universal. “The heartbreak that would bring to a family every time, and you just don’t even know how they managed to get through.” — Sarah Lyall (14:33)
• The book gives language to the “illogical” nature of grief, especially the loss of a child (13:20).
• Literary resonance: many characters have lost children; these experiences pervade the family and the era (14:41–15:18).

5. Themes, Symbols, and Literary Techniques

• Hamnet is rich with duality: Hamnet & Judith (twins); different models of motherhood/fatherhood; home vs. away; Hamnet & Hamlet (38:14–39:04).

• The narrative perspective is fluid—shifting among family members, accentuating both intimacy and distance (41:20–41:52).

• Notable Interlude: The “flea” interlude—zooming out to follow the origins of the plague infecting Judith and Hamnet, a “global” sweep contrasting the domestic drama (39:42–41:20).

  “All of a sudden, you’re global. You’re way zoomed out.” — Leah Greenblatt (40:39)

• O’Farrell’s prose is described as incantatory, looping, evocative; her use of descriptors in “threes” is noted (19:26–19:53).

• Emotional highlight: Hamnet’s self-sacrificing love for Judith: “He goes and lies next to her in bed and says, I’m going to trade my life for hers...so awful when you read that.” — Sarah Lyall (17:45)

6. Shakespeare’s Art and the Alchemy of Grief

• O’Farrell avoids naming Shakespeare directly; keeps him at a distance, except through the family’s perception (32:18–32:52).
• The book suggests Hamlet (and subsequent tragedies) were Shakespeare’s processing of grief for his son—“an act of alchemy by taking the loss of their son and turning it into this beautiful play…he casts Hamnet, or Hamlet, their son, as the one who survives, and himself as the ghost.” — Jen Harlan (35:17)
• Agnes as both muse and co-architect of Shakespeare’s genius—the book imagines her as one who “concocts a little trick for him to leave the house...fulfill his promise” (21:41).
• Moving final line of the novel: “Remember me?”—the ghost’s call as the eternal echo of love and loss (48:55).

7. Notable Quotes and Memorable Lines

• “Grief is so illogical. Death is a natural part of life, but when we experience it, it’s so illogical.” — M.J. Franklin (13:20)
• “The rhythm...the questioning of it, and the repetitiveness…incantatory.” — MJ Franklin, reading from O’Farrell (47:34)
• “He is dead. He is Dead. He is dead. The three words contain no sense for her. She cannot bend her mind to their meaning...” — (47:34)
• “Remember me? the ghost says. And that’s the end.” — Sarah Lyall reading the last line of the novel (48:55)

8. Film Adaptation Discussion (50:00–55:21)

• General Consensus: The film is faithful but adapts as necessary for the visual medium. Jessie Buckley (Agnes) and Paul Mescal (Shakespeare) are standouts.
• “What Jessie Buckley is able to communicate on her face…Chloé Zhao translates the feelings that you get with this book into the movie.” — MJ Franklin (51:28)
• Both book and film convey a capacious, gut-wrenching sense of sadness.
• Recommendation: Read the book first, then see the film. “It enriches the movie.” — Leah Greenblatt, Jennifer Harlan (55:21)

9. Recommended Next Reads (56:32–62:42)

• On Parental Grief:
  • Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  • Fee by Alexandra Fuller (memoir on child loss)
  • Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li (memoir of losing two sons)
  • Once More We Saw Stars by Jason Greene (devastating memoir)
  • Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch (book-length elegy)
• On Family & Pairing:
  • The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
  • The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler (numbness of grief and redemption)
• On Shakespeare & Historical Context:
  • Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
  • The Decline and Fall of the English Freethinker by James Shapiro
  • Dark Renaissance by Stephen Greenblatt (bio of Marlowe)
• “Go read some Shakespeare...Or, even better, go find a theater near you and go see them.” — Jen Harlan (58:37)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Setup & Summary of Hamnet: 04:11–06:53
• Panel Reactions: Lightning Round: 09:13–12:44
• Discussion on Agnes (Depth and Mysticism): 07:10–10:43, 23:10–27:51
• Historical context & grief: 13:20–15:18
• Discussion of Structure, Narrative Techniques: 38:14–42:56
• 'Flea' Plague Interlude: 39:42–41:20
• Shakespearean Resonances: 31:56–36:05
• Quote on Grief (read aloud): 47:34–48:43
• Final line of the novel: 48:55
• Film Adaptation Discussion: 50:00–55:21
• Recommended Next Reads: 56:32–62:42

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Notable Listener & Reader Comments

• “O’Farrell renders such a colorful, lively portrait of his [Shakespeare’s] life and family, and it felt like pure poetry.” — Tiffany from Colorado (29:42)
• “A masterclass in the use of detail to paint a picture in a novel.” — Howard from New York (29:42)
• “[O’Farrell’s] masterpiece on parental love and sorrow has helped my husband and I turn toward our grief, learning from it and allowing it to change us.” — Linda from Washington (29:42)

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Tone & Language

The tone throughout the episode is warm, intelligent, and emotionally candid. The panel openly discusses their responses—sometimes scholarly, sometimes raw—with genuine respect for the novel’s emotional power and O’Farrell’s craftsmanship.

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Conclusion

Hamnet deeply moved the NYT Book Review Podcast panel, sparking a multifaceted conversation about parental grief, historical imagination, writing craft, and the role of women in Shakespeare’s story. The novel is praised for breathing life and agency into Agnes while providing universal insight into the experience of loss. The new film adaptation is recommended (with the book first, if possible). For those left looking for more, the panel compiles a rich list of reading on grief, family, and Shakespeare’s world.

December Book Club Pick:
Next month’s title is What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (to be discussed December 26).

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[For a full discussion and more listener comments, visit the NYT Book Review online.]

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. We're very close to the end of the year. So close, in fact, that on next week's episode, we are going to reveal our top 10 books of the year, five fiction, five nonfiction. It's a list that we work on all year round. Very excited for you all to hear about it on this week's episode, as we do at the end of every month, we have our book club discussion. And Speaking of top 10 books of the year, this time around, MJ Franklin and friends are talking about one of our best books of 2020, which has been made into a new film. MJ, over to you.

[D]

Hello and welcome to another book club episode of the Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review, and this week we're about Maggie O. Farrow's novel Hamnet. Hamnet came out in 2020 to great fanfare. It received a spate of rave reviews when it first published. It was one of the New York Times best books of 2020, and in general, it seemed to capture the hearts of readers Everywhere. Now, in 2025, the novel has been adapted into a feature film directed by Chloe Zhao and starring Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal. Because the book is back in the conversation, we thought, let's revisit it for book club. And joining me in this journey is a collection of my esteemed colleagues. We're just gonna go around the table. We have Sarah Lyle, who's a writer at large at the Times, our thrillers columnist, our Jane Austen expert. You do many, many things, including join the book club. Sarah, welcome.

[E]

I'm so happy to be here.

[D]

Also with us is Jen Harlan, another editor at the Book Review, also a Jane Austen expert. You also do many, many, many things. Jen, welcome back.

[F]

I'm very happy to be here wearing all of my hats.

[D]

And also with us is Leah Greenblatt, also wears many hats. We are an editor here at the Book review. You may recognize her byline and Read like the Wind and our Saturday newsletter recommendation. You've joined the podcast and book club before, but it's been a while.

[B]

It's been a minute.

[D]

Welcome back.

[B]

I guess I'm not that esteemed.

[D]

Oh my gosh. Extremely esteemed. That's why we had to have you back.

[F]

She's an exclusive.

[D]

This is a book club and apparently a fight club is. So that's our lineup. Before we dig in, I have my typical admin notes. First, there will be spoilers in this episode. This is a tricky book, spoiler wise, because you know the major plot points before the story even begins. The novel opens with a historical note that tells you the big points. Because of that, we are just gonna dig in. I think this is also a hard book to spoil because it's a book that you experience and you know what's going to happen. So knowing that, if you want to go in completely fresh, we recommend you pause this episode. Go read the book and then come back to us. But if you want to wallow, bask, luxuriate, sit in Hamnet with us, let's do it. Second, this conversation is going to focus on the novel. For the most part, it's a book club. We want to talk about the book. However, we will have a few minutes at the end to talk about the movie, if anyone's seen it. And then last but not least, at the end of the episode, we will reveal our December book club pick. So stay with us and I'm going to take an exhale. I'm going to be done talking. That's all the admin that I have with that. Let's just dive in to get started. Can someone give us a brief setup? What is this novel? Hamnet?

[F]

I can take that. So, as MJ said, Hamnet is a book of historical fiction that came out in 2020. It is about a real family and we know, like you said, some of the broad details from the start. There are five people in this immediate family. There's the mother, Agnes, who is what we would now call like a naturalist or herbalist. She grew up on the edge of the forest, is considered kind of strange by the people in her town, and has a really deep knowledge both of nature and also perhaps some sort of ability to see into people's souls and into the future. There are the three children. There's Susannah, and then a set of twins, Judith and Hamnet. And then there is the father, who is referred to in the book first as the Latin tutor, and then as the playwright. But who we know from the beginning is in fact not just the playwright, or a playwright, I should say, but the playwright William Shakespeare.

[D]

Ever heard of him?

[F]

Just a minor figure. And we also know from the very beginning that this book is about a tragedy. Hamnet, who was the one son in the family, died when he was 11 years old in 1596. There's no definitive historical record, but Maggie O' Farrell is going with the. One of the general prevailing theories, which is that he died the plague. The book is actually subtitled A Novel of the Plague. And a few years after he died, his father wrote what is perhaps his best known play, Hamlet. The other thing that's important to know historically about this is that spelling was much more fluid in this era in England. And at the time, Hamnet and Hamlet were basically interchangeable as names. And so o' Farrell posits that this play was a direct result of the loss of his son and processing that grief. So you go in and knowing a lot of these facts already, none of that is a surprise, like a 400-year-old spoiler. But what is really effective about this book, the way that o' Farrell builds this world and tells a story. It's set up in two parts. You start off in part one, switching back and forth between one of the final days of Hamnet's life as his twin has started to get sick and he's frantically running around town. It's almost like a thriller. You've got this TikTok of the day and where all the members of the family are. And you can feel this tragedy looming where you know that you're gonna lose this child. And then you also learn a bit about Enyas and the playwright and how they met and their love story. You follow the book through Hamnet's death, which is excruciating and evocative. And I don't think I've ever cried so much reading a book as I did reading this one. And then the second half of the book is about how everyone in the family, but particularly Hamnet's parents, process this loss differently. So it is a book about a real piece of history, but it's also a book about a marriage and about parenthood and about loss and grief, all those great universal themes.

[D]

That was incredible. And listeners don't realize there was no script that Jen just read from that was off the dome and was so perfect. Thank you.

[F]

I was pondering beforehand. I wasn't coming in completely cold, but thank you, Leah.

[D]

Sarah, is there anything that you want to Add in just to the setup of that book.

[F]

Yeah.

[E]

I think one of the really interesting things about this is how little is known really historically about these people, even though it is Shakespeare. One of the great mysteries about Shakespeare is everything. We don't know much actually about how he lived or what he was thinking or what he did. And so she's able to take this really bare bones set of historical facts and create a world not just about Shakespeare and what his inspirations might have been for this great play, but also about what his home life must have been like. And also, you know, it's called Hamnet, but it's really just as much about Hamnet's mother, Agnes. And it fills in a lot of the gaps in everyone's minds who thinks about Shakespeare, about his wife. His wife has always gotten short shrift in history, I think, and this makes her into a really fantastic character. She is, as Jen pointed out, a naturalist, herbalist. Probably. People thought of those people as witches back then, but she's a healer. She's very intuitive with not just people, but animals. It gives her a dignity in this fiction that I don't think she's ever had in the historical record. And I found that really moving as well.

[D]

So you just said something that I'm also going to say for setup reasons, which is Agnes or Agnes. I always called her Agnes when I first read it. Even though reading it a second time, I saw that there was a clue of her pronunciation in the book.

[E]

Agnes.

[D]

Agnes. Agnes. I feel like for this conversation, do what feels most natural.

[E]

Well, because also Anne is her other name. It's part of what you were talking about. The spellings were fluid and we don't have what was written. Agnes in one document and Anne in another document.

[F]

I think Shakespeare refers to her as Anne Hathaway in his writing. But then her father's will calls her Agnes. And so we've gone with Agnes here. There's also some real names of. A lot of people would just have the same name. So o' Farrell also talks in her author's note about how she is just taking some creative license. Anne is. Agnes is. Agnes is the mother.

[D]

Oh, my God. Is mother.

[F]

Is mother.

[D]

So with that set up out of the way, I wanna go around and just ask everyone. Can you give me one sentence? What did you think about the book? We'll go around lightning round and then we'll dig in. But what do you think about the book? Love it, Hate it, Feel mixed. I'm gonna start with you, Leah.

[B]

I'm a little Mixed. I think there are a lot of really beautiful and even transcendent moments in this book. I am also, I would say, a mixed fan of Maggie o'. Farrell. I love what I love with her. I have not read all of her and she's not a fiction writer strictly. She has done some historical fiction. But there are people who I feel like that is absolutely their lane. And this I think was an experiment for Maggie. A sort of mid career swerve a little bit. Because also she. We know she has. Is it a marriage story?

[F]

A marriage portrait.

[B]

A marriage Portrait. Thank you.

[D]

And those are the only two that I've read. Hamnet and A Marriage Portrait.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

I remember her memoir.

[B]

My favorite. Maggie o' Farrell is actually the memoir. I Am, I Am, I Am. And it actually.

[D]

17 brushes with death.

[B]

Yes. Which connect in interesting ways to this book. I think I am very much here for this sort of redemption or just the illumination of Anne. Agnes. Agnes, she was six years older than William Shakespeare by all the records. They got married when she was 26 and he was 18. And she was cast a bit as the. Oh, not quite a cougar or a predator, but a bit of a. Maybe an opportunist who snagged onto this man and entrapped him.

[D]

So you, Leah, are mixed. What about you, Jen?

[F]

I love this book. It was the first and I think it's the only book of Maggie o' Farrell's that I have read. I was really blown away by it the first time I read it and then was a little bit trepidatious going back in to revisit it again just because I did have such a strong emotional reaction to it the first time in a way that I was not anticipating. Like I'm not normally someone who cries reading books. And this one really got me and I found it just completely absorbing and moving again on a. And found even more things to love this time.

[D]

I'm just gonna butt in and say that's where I am too. I loved it when I first read it. I loved it a second time. I was talking to people around the office and I was like, hamnet, so sad the first time, so sad the second time. And then Jen and I saw the movie together and we'll talk about that later. But we saw the movie together and we were like, also so sad. Third time with the movie. It's just devastating. But I loved this story, I loved this book. So that's where I am as well.

[F]

I'm also a semi secret like giant Shakespeare nerd and so I love any reimagining or new glimpse into I know this. Yeah.

[D]

Breaking news on the podcast My Secret.

[F]

Past is that I ran a site specific Shakespeare troupe at my college and so I spent a lot of time doing Shakespeare plays.

[E]

What does that mean, site specific?

[F]

We did mostly outdoor shows and then sometimes because we wanted to expand our programming for times of year when it was not nice outside, which in Rhode island is most of the academic year, would do shows in like classrooms and courtyards and libraries and basically anything that's not a traditional theater.

[D]

This is so cool. This is like when we were reading Play World for the book club and the editor, Dave Kim, was on as a guest and revealed that he wrestled in high school, which is not why we chose him for the book club. But we were like, how did you not mention this before? I love this.

[F]

We all contain multitudes.

[E]

I thought that's why we hired him at the Book review, because it's wrestling.

[D]

Packs to wrestle our ups. What about you?

[B]

Wrestle our pros.

[D]

What about you, Sarah? How did you feel about the book?

[E]

Like you guys, the first time I read it, I spent half my reading time weeping. This time I felt I was able to have more of a distance from it and think hard about something. I've been thinking about a little too much lately, about what it's like for families when a child dies and the different ways people get over that or live through it or what it does to a family. And I thought as a portrait of a grief that is in the end of this book, put towards something so beautiful, which is Shakespeare's art, it gave me a bit of hope in this reading that I hadn't had before.

[D]

Oh, yeah. I think this is partially why the book has connected with so many people, which is grief is so illogical. Death is a natural part of life, but when we experience it, it's so illogical. And then the death of a child, of your child goes against truly the natural order. It's supposed to be the parents die first and then later on. So there's something so painful about what this book is diving into. And I feel like this book gives language to that.

[E]

Also, when you think about this historical thing, back then, life was a lot more precarious. A lot of people's children died before they did. And we have this way of sometimes thinking, well, maybe it didn't matter because they expected people to die. I remember once being in Rome and going, maybe is it the catacombs where you see all the old graves of old Romans and seeing some of the graves of children or some headstones to children. And they would say something like, so and so died at age 3 years, 5 months, 2 days, 5 minutes. And thinking that even back then, when probably half your children or I don't know how many children died, everybody died.

[D]

Wow.

[E]

Sorry. One in three. But yet even then, the heartbreak that would bring to a family every time, and you just don't even know how they managed to get through.

[F]

Quite honestly, I think that was something I was struck by, too, on this reading that I hadn't. I think the first time I read it, I was really focused on Hamnet as the central child and central death. But there are a lot of dead children in this book. Every character has been touched by this, whether it's Agnes who loses her mother and who would have been her younger sibling when she's a child. You have. Shakespeare's mother has lost three of her children, I believe, including two as babies and then one when she was older. And, yes, exactly what you were saying, Sarah. This sort of. This idea of the precariousness of life that does not in any way make it any less precious.

[D]

So I want to go back to you, Leah. We've just been gushing about this book. You felt mixed. Tell me more.

[B]

I may have overstated my objections to this book. I think I felt like I have to be the contrarian now that I've staked a position. I think what I struggled a little bit with in this book in some ways was the lack of dialogue. I think it is a little bit of a. Less propulsive in a way, and more meditative that you have so little dialogue.

[D]

It's very interior the entire time, which.

[B]

I love an interior book. We all hopefully have interiors and live there much of the time. Aside from the hologram sitting across from me, Sarah Lyle. I struggled a bit with these sort of the magical, mystical, Stevie Nicks, witchy woman aspects of Agnes. Agnes. Agnes. I do feel that sometimes when you're talking about women who lived in eras where they had no real power, the powers that are given to them are these almost supernatural or otherworldly sort of things, like she can cure everything with a basket of herbs, you know, which.

[F]

Raise someone's hand and see when they're gonna cure their entire future.

[B]

That little fleshy part between the thumb and the finger to read your whole. And the husband, who was unnamed, who was William says, how difficult it is to be married to someone that you cannot be a mystery to, because she sees everything and she knows everything. Except, of course, she miscees or misinterprets that she says early on, I think in the book, there are two children standing by my deathbed.

[D]

That's her vision.

[B]

She has. Yes. Or two figures standing by my deathbed. So she assumes in her second pregnancy, of course, that it will not be twins. And how could anyone infuse them?

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes. She can't make that out of twigs, so there's no ultrasound. And then while she's giving birth to the twins, she goes, oh, I'm mistaken. It's the two women in the room with me standing over my deathbed and.

[F]

I'm about to die. That's how I died, just like my mother.

[B]

So that sort of shifts. It's not like she has absolute clarity with these things.

[E]

But her vision turns out to be true in the end, isn't it? Because she does only have two children who survive.

[B]

No, it is absolutely true. And she thinks for so long that it's Judith, because Judith is the twin who comes out second and much weaker, half the size.

[F]

And in fact, she is dead when she is born. She's not breathing, partially because of the prophecy.

[D]

She's. I only have two. One was born, Hamnet was born. I have this older child.

[E]

Isn't that one of the most haunting pieces in the book, though? When Hamnet goes and sees his twin, Judith, on her deathbed, it feels like from the plague. And he goes and lies next to her in bed and says, I'm gonna trade my life for hers. And that game we used to play as kids where we preten to be each other, I'll fool death and I'll take on. And it's so awful when you read that.

[F]

It's also this, like, pure love of this little kid for his sibling who would do anything, but also probably conditioned.

[B]

As the stronger sibling to protect her his whole life. And so one of the reasons that Agnes won't join William in London when he finally escapes his father's clutches and gets out there to start his life and be a playwright is because their little girl is not healthy enough for the smog and the danger and chaos of the big city.

[D]

But this is all about the dynamics of these children in this family. But I want to go back to your point about just the mysticism of Anya's and whether or not that landed. So you felt like she was too mystical of a figure.

[B]

I don't actually feel that Maggie had overdone it. It's just a trope that bothers me sometimes a little bit, because it makes someone a little Less human. And Agnes's grief is very human and very real and very tangible in the book. But in a way, it just. It made her a little floating above. She had no real flaws until she was grieving, I would say, in a way which is a little difficult for me in a protagonist.

[D]

So you said that you felt mixed, though, not that you disliked the book. What was it that kind of saved the book or that lifted you up while these other things bothered you?

[B]

I have heard people say about this book that all of Maggie o' Farrell's adjectives come in threes. And once you see that, it's very hard to unsee it. So in some ways, I think she does write in a canto sort of. It's like these loops and whorls instead of. She does not walk a straight line. So she'll tend to describe things in these ways that are very. I wouldn't say circular, but she swirls around her text.

[E]

That's such a great way of putting it.

[D]

I have a question for you, though, Sarah, which is when I mentioned in a team meeting like, a month ago that for November we were gonna be reading Hamnet, you slacked me immediately, and you were like, I want in. What is it about this book for you?

[E]

Well, again, I think the mysteries around Shakespeare are so legion. And whenever we have that great thing at the book review by the book where people fill out these questionnaires, and I'm sure all of you, too, have, like, if they ever ask me, this.

[B]

Is what I'll say, ready for my close answer.

[E]

Sadly, they're not gonna ask. But one of them is, if you had writers, living or dead, who would you have? And I would just have Shakespeare and maybe Stephen Greenblatt to quiz him, or James Shapiro.

[F]

Oh, my God, what a dinner party.

[E]

So many questions about it. And this helps fill out in a really wonderful way. I'd like to redeem this Agnes character a little bit from you. I mean, I think part of. Again, she's always been seen in other works as the recipient of the second best bed in Shakespeare's will, which made it seem like she was just a pain in the neck and he didn't love her at all. And Shakespeare in Love, it's always how he's away and sleeping with Gwynneth Paltrow. But this is. This is a good and interesting explanation of how she might have helped her husband fulfill his promise. There's a great line in there where somebody, maybe it's her brother Bartholomew, is talking to him about her and says when she Met you. You seem like such an unlikely man for her to fall in love with. But she said you had more hidden inside you than anyone else she'd ever met. So part of the intuition is that she sees that he has a great mind. And she's the one in the book who says. Who concocts a little trick for him to leave the house where he's been so unhappy and fulfill his promise, whatever it's going to be.

[F]

And at great sacrifice to her own happiness too. Like, she loves him, she doesn't want to send him away, but I think can see the promise and also the way that he's.

[E]

Exactly. And she's also. She's illiterate or she's barely literate in the book, as a lot of women were then. And one of the big question marks again over Shakespeare, I think, is with his extraordinary mind and writing ability and hyper, hyper, hyper literacy, what was it like for him to be married to someone who had no education? And this at least gives her place in his story. That I like. And I agree with you about the writing style, but I feel like with this, it worked for me.

[B]

We should also say, though really quickly, I believe that the bed thing, that beds were about as expensive as houses.

[D]

Right.

[B]

And so I think we all are like, well, apostropedic. What's that about? You know, why would he just give.

[E]

Her this old bed rather than the best bit?

[F]

Well, I do really love it. Doesn't she say that little.

[B]

She doesn't.

[F]

She slips something in about it towards the end. That's right.

[E]

She like they like that.

[F]

She's moved into, like, the fancy new house now that her husband is successful and he deputizes their older daughter Susannah to buy a lot of new furniture. And Oferrell says her mother, however, refuses to give up her bed, saying it was the bed she was married in and she will not have another. So the new, grander bed is put in the room for guests. And I love that even then, Maggie Ofrell's I'm not gonna let you drag my girl.

[G]

Agnes.

[D]

Jen, I'm curious what you think about Agnes. So we have someone who felt mixed, someone who really liked Agnes. You are deciding about how do you feel?

[F]

I'm very pro. Agnes. I think it was interesting. I think you described her accurately, by one metric as uneducated. But I think part of what I find so compelling and moving about the portrait of this woman in this book is that while she doesn't have traditional book education and isn't literate, she is Incredibly intelligent and wise and has this emotional and medical and natural intelligence that really infuses her and the whole book. And also, I think Maggie Ofrell brings such incredible humanity to her and just the way that she is both the beating heart of this family and of this book. I was fully invested in her from the beginning. And also I think anyone who has been a girl who has maybe a little too much imagination and likes to go play in the woods and make up stories can really identify with her. And seeing her really take center stage in this way, I found really satisfying.

[D]

Between first reading it and then the reading for this book club. My memory was just that Agnes was preternaturally good at nature and her biologists. And I don't think I remember just how seemingly supernatural she was. For me, reading it a second time, I was shocked by how mystical and otherworldly she was. Cause I just thought she was.

[E]

Yeah.

[D]

In my memory though, she's just.

[E]

But she's also super intuitive and she's super good at understanding motivations. Remember, she concocts a few things in the household by saying, if you do this with him, he'll respond this way and thus this will happen. Remember, she says with her stepmother, she always likes it when she gets to contradict you. So you tell her you don't want to do something that you do want to do. And she'll be like, we should do that.

[F]

She's also an incredible observer of everyone around her, I think because she's been dismissed from a young age as strange and she doesn't fit in with the traditional ideas, both in her own home, where she is raised from a pretty young age by her stepmother who does not fundamentally does not understand her, or by the people in the village. But I really enjoy the part where she, right after she and her husband get married and she moves into the house, she spends about a week just observing the routines of the house. And then I think you're. I believe if I'm remembering correctly, you're seeing this through the eyes of her mother in law, Shakespeare's mother, who notices that after about a week she doesn't have to tell the servant girls to get the dough out every morning, it's just there. And something that had been in a place that was really inconvenient has been moved to a place that makes so much more sense. I think you could call it witchy and magical, or you could call it that. She. Agnes has this great ability to pay attention to the people and the world around her, which is something that I think is also true of her husband, who is seen as this incredible observer of the human condition.

[B]

She also clocks the relationship between Shakespeare and his father pretty quickly. And one thing I think is interesting, the whole great man theory, that if you look at someone like Picasso or these people who used women as accessories and muses. But even though Maggie is making this out of whole cloth, essentially this portrait of Agnes, cause there's just no way. There's so little. There's almost no implementation.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

But the idea that Agnes would be an innately emotionally intelligent person who under different circumstances could have been a scholar, could have been a doctor, could have been all kinds of things, makes you like the idea of Shakespeare more. That he was looking for someone who was an equal or at least someone who could see his dreams and join him on that journey rather than just like a breed mare.

[E]

Can I say one more thing about Shakespeare? What everyone has pointed out is that the play Hamlet was written just a couple years after Hamnet died. And as Jen mentioned, Hamnet was essentially the same name as Hamlet. And there's really moving the very end of the book when Agnes goes to see the play and sees how the first ever play Shakespeare has put his grief into this play. But also I want to say, after Hamlet was written, we had King Lear and we had Macbeth, which have two of the most shattering scenes of parents dealing with the deaths of their children as I've ever seen. And one of them in King Lear, it's when King Lear sits with dead Cordelia on his lap sobbing toward the end of his life. And then in Macbeth, when Macduff, when his children are all killed. And there's that line where he said he hears that all his family has been slaughtered and he says, all my pretty ones all. And that's another scene of just devastating emotion.

[D]

We're going to continue with our conversation, but first we should take a quick break.

[H]

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[D]

This is the Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm with Leah Greenblatt, Sarah Lyle, and Jen Harlan, and we're discussing Hamnet by Maggie o'. Farrell. Before we jump back to our conversation in the studio, I wanted to share some reader comments. We have an article up on the New York Times Headline Book Club Read Hamnet by Maggie o' Farrell with the Book Review. We've been talking about the novel with readers across the world. Claire Here are a few thoughtful comments I wanted to pass along. Tiffany from Colorado writes, I just finished reading this book and I can't stop talking and thinking about it. I've never had much interest in Shakespeare, but o' Farroll renders such a colorful, lively portrait of his life and family, and it felt like pure poetry. Howard from New York writes, one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. Both beautiful and devastatingly sad, with a warm, bittersweet ending. A masterclass in the use of detail to paint a picture in a novel. Kate from Kentucky writes, though the death of Hamnet was wrenching, the author's focus on Hathaway gave the book a refreshingly proto feminist twist. It remains among my favorites of Farrow's books. And then Linda from Washington left a really beautiful and moving comment about this book in her own experience of loss. It's longer and really thoughtful, so visit us online to see the full comment. But I did want to read one portion, and it is I return to passages from Hamnet to understand what we've survived. They continue to encourage me to welcome the layers of grief I live with. Maggie o' Farrell in this masterpiece on parental love and sorrow has helped my husband and I turn toward our grief, learning from it and allowing it to change us. So that was just a really thoughtful comment from Linda. And all of these comments are really, really insightful and moving. So go check that out. I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has read with us this month. Continue the conversation online. Now we're going to jump back into our conversation in the studio. Sarah, how has Shakespeare and his work impacted your reading of Hamnet? And has Hamnet changed how you think of any of Shakespeare's works? You put that chronology in front of us, Sarah.

[E]

I think it's so and you might know this better than me, Jen, but I think it's very rare that there's anything in Shakespeare's life that you see come out in his plays. You can't find the autobiography in them because we know so little about his life. And this is an effort to find a devastating moment in his life and make it explain some things in some of the plays. And that's what it did for me. It didn't make me rethink Shakespeare.

[D]

So two things. One is, for me, the parts and the book doesn't stress this, but the parts in the book that most directly say, this is what impacted Shakespeare, this is how Hamlet came to be, were some of my least favorite parts, just because I was so hooked by and captured by Anya herself. And I liked that this book didn't even name Shakespeare. And I like that he's kept at a distance and you just get to sit in this experience and sit in this interiority.

[E]

But he's the one who took the experience to the outside world and tried to make it into something meaningful. And that's what's so moving about that part of it, I think.

[D]

And I think that's what Maggie o' Farrell's doing with Anya's. She has taken this grief and made it so moving for us in a different way with a different audience in a different medium. So I loved that. And then I guess my question for the Shakespearean scholars in the room were.

[B]

There is just one.

[F]

I wouldn't call myself a Shakespearean scholar.

[D]

Were there Easter eggs or quotes or things from Shakespeare that you're like, oh, I see what Maggie's doing here. She's riffing on this line.

[F]

I don't know that it was specific lines. I I think both the idea of twins and of swapping identities or hiding your identity is something that comes up a lot in Shakespeare. Probably the most famous example is Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, who are twins, who then both end up disguising themselves as their opposite genders. And in that play is a vehicle for comedy. Also, the idea of, like Sarah mentioned, of ghosts. And something else that Hamlet and Macbeth and King Lear all have in common, too, is ghosts appear in all of those plays as the sort of physical or metaphysical manifestation of grief. Forest's also very important in a lot of his plays. And that the woods where Agnes comes from is almost a character in this book. And there's a few little. Like the scene where the playwright William Shakespeare is leaving for London for the first time and is saying goodbye to Agnes, but then doesn't really want to leave. He's okay, I have to leave. No, I won't leave. Really reminded me of the morning after the wedding scene in Romeo and Juliet where they're doing this. It's like that. You hang up first. No, you hang up first. No, you leave. Okay. No, don't leave. No, I have to leave. No, don't leave. But the thing that I found most beautiful and most powerful as a resonance in this book is actually not from one of the plays. The ending of the book where you find Agnes discovers that her husband, who has been distant as they've been moving through this grief. And she's been really angry that she feels basically abandoned her in this grief, has in fact been performing this sort of act of alchemy by taking the loss of their son and turning it into this beautiful play. And he also, in the play, casts Hamnet, or Hamlet, their son, as the one who survives and himself as the ghost. And in that way has done what every parent who loses a child wishes they could do. To swap places and take the death himself.

[E]

And also she watches this scene where her husband is the ghost. And he has somehow made this character of Hamlet on stage. Have the mannerisms and the appearance of Hamlet. And he's brought him back to life that way.

[F]

And also in this way has preserved him for life forever. Has made it so that he will live again and will continue to live forever. And what my probably favorite sonnet of Shakespeare's, which is Sonnet 18, ends with the line, so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this. And this gives life to thee. And that to me is the magic of the play and the magic of this book. And in some way is the most powerful and magical thing that he could have done. Is he has this gift. And he has used it to make their son live forever.

[B]

I think it's interesting because we still talk about how men may struggle to express themselves and their Emotions, especially the really big emotions. And the scene where he's trying to get back. This letter has made its way to him saying that Judith, in fact, is probably about to die and that he will not make it back in time for her. And he talks about how he stops and he sees a girl with a horse, I think, or a cow. And he's so angry, he wants to shove her off the cliff. And he wants to pluck every blossom from the trees because he's losing his mind, basically.

[F]

He loves the idea that how could people just be going about their normal day and their normal life?

[B]

And then you realize, and Agnes realizes that this is where he has put all of those messy and terrible emotions that have overwhelmed him. He's put it into his work. And the work is so remote to her because she has not moved to London with him. They're generally not living together. So she feels that he just wants to get back to his sexy life in London while she's grieving.

[E]

Really amazing moment that they have this thing in common. He does understand. And now they can at least find some emotional contact with each other again.

[B]

She can forgive him, and she can also reconnect with him.

[F]

She has never been to London before, and she. I think she has concocted this vision in her head of what she thinks her husband's life is like there. He's a very successful playwright. He's making all this money. People know who he is. And so she shows up expecting to find this. And she has this sense, not that long before she goes there, that he has been sleeping with other women. He hasn't been faithful to her while. While he's here.

[B]

She buries the bracelet because it's tainted by other women.

[F]

So she has this idea of this, like, glamorous. He's lifting it up in London while I'm at home grieving our son. And then she gets there and finds where he's been living. And it's basically this, like a monk. Monk's hovel. And that everything that has come out of this work, he has been pouring all of his emotion, all of his energy into this play. And that everything that comes out of that has actually been going back to his family and to creating this new house with this garden, this place where she can hopefully be at peace and thrive.

[D]

Well, that was one of the things I was really interested in with this book, is just the way that Maggie o' Farrell plays with duality, both in assumptions that the characters have about each other, but then also with storytelling beats. And so I Just start writing things down. Of pairs in the book. We have Hamnet and Judith, the twins. We have different portraits of fatherhood with Shakespeare and his father. We have different portraits of motherhood with Anges and her mother, stepmother. But then she has a birth mother and a stepmother. So then there's also a duality and a mother in law and a mother in law. We have Hamnet and Hamlet. We have.

[F]

Even the house is like on a mirror. You have Shakespeare's parents house and then Shakespeare and Agnes's house is built in the alley next door. And you have this duality there too.

[D]

For me, while reading. The first time I read this book, I was just a raw ball of nerves, just feeling, feeling, feeling. And then the second time I read it, I feel like I was able to notice a lot of specific technical things. I was also noticing how so much is at a distance. We hear about the assumptions of Anges before we actually meet her. We hear about the theory of who Shakespeare is and this father is before we meet him. I'm wondering though, are there storytelling decisions that really stood out to you? Not just the story itself, but in the telling? What stood out?

[B]

I am a fan and I know that not everyone was. I love the interlude where we jump to the flea that starts it all.

[E]

Oh, I thought that was fantastic.

[B]

And I think it's about 40, 150 pages in, where all of a sudden we zoom out and we're on the island of Murano in Venice with this glass maker who just has a bad accident in the glass lab, Burns himself. And that is the impetus for this entire thing. And it travels from there to this cabin boy in Alexandria who's a boy from the Isle of Man, meets a monkey, who meets a monkey. The monkey and the boy are both not where they should be. They're both these two lonely figures who find each other in a moment. The monkey clings to him. It's this beautiful little connection. Except three fleas jump off. He crushes one with his boot. I think if I mistake otherwise on it. Yeah, not the monkey. The flea. The monkey's fine, though not.

[F]

The monkey survives largely unscathed, though we have concerns about his owner.

[D]

Monkey, this is Dora the explorer. I know monkey in boots.

[B]

But you see, the one flea, I think, jumps into his hair and then onto a man at a tavern, an innkeeper. And the other one fatefully goes back to the boat. And that is. It is like the monkey in the movie Outbreak.

[E]

That's how the plague eventually gets to England.

[B]

I mean, they talk about essentially Plague season in London and how intermittently William will be done with work because he'll have to take a break because of all these plagues. But this specific way of tracing it back, I thought was such an interesting. Because you're so enclosed in the world of this house, essentially because London, we don't get very much of London. But then all of a sudden, you're global. You're way zoomed out.

[D]

That sweep from the inside the house to global made me think of just how, in general, the narrative perspective of this book is all over the place. You're with Hamnet alone in the street, then you're with Anges looking at the bees, then you're with Susannah, who walks in and isn't sure where people are. You're constantly shifting perspective in a way that I forgot, because I so firmly thought that this was just Anya's story. And then reading it again, I was like, wait, we're doing really fascinating things with perspective and with time.

[F]

I think her pacing is just masterful on this reading. I feel like I was reading a disaster thriller at the beginning.

[B]

Tragedy of Errors.

[F]

Yeah, you're just like watching every minute and every day, and you can see the cars approaching from a great distance, about to crash into each other. And you're watching this kid run around. And she also, I think, does this really effective job of making you really fall in love with this kid from the beginning, just from a little bit, talking about how you learn very quickly, how much he loves his sister, how distracted he is. He's playful, he's cheeky, he's mischievous in Latin.

[E]

He's a brilliant scholar, also loves kittens.

[F]

There's also this line I love when she's describing him. She says he has a tendency to slip the bounds of the real tangible world around him and enter another place, which I love both about him, but also is so emblematic of both of his parents for his father, that's. He slips the bounds of reality and dreams up these incredible worlds in his play. And then Agnes also is sort of untethered in this way, or has contact with a world beyond our own in a way that is uncanny and interesting.

[D]

I had a quote that I wanted to read, too, which is, I think the portrait of Hamnet is so relatable because he's such a typical young boy from the first. And this is how the book opens. A boy is coming down a flight of stairs. The passage is narrow and twists back on itself. He takes each step slowly, sliding himself along the wall, his boots meeting each tread with A thud near the bottom. He pauses for a moment, looking back at the way he's come. Then, suddenly resolute, he leaps the final three stairs. As is his habit, he stumbles as he lands, falling to his knees on the flagstone floor. I know this portrait of a young 11 year old boy who's just like energy, just energy, and is like skipping. And the way he moves, it feels so relatable. And then because we feel him, because we know him, his loss for the reader, I think is so devastating. Are there any other things that we haven't gotten to, that you want to mention?

[E]

A tiny little thing where you were talking about what things in Shakespeare this reminded me of? This isn't maybe even right, but in the book Agnes icky stepmother is called Joan. And I kept thinking, is it in A Winter's Tale, the thing where they talk about greasy Joan doth keel the pot. I kept thinking of the yucky stepmothers all greasy and keeling a pot.

[D]

I haven't read Winter's Tale. I need to go back. That's partially why I was asking about Shakespeare's. I was like, I want to know the Easter eggs. I want to know the connections. And so my readings, I think what's.

[E]

So maddening is we wish we knew more. And it's so hard to match the work to the life. And so again, I think the redemption for this kind of grief is if you can put it into, as we were saying before, into a permanent work of art that that transcends your own experience, that people will read and watch forever. It's really, really beautiful.

[F]

One scene that really, again, I was very moved again on this reading both by the whole description of Hamnet's death and the immediate aftermath of that, which is so visceral and gruesome and unflinching in its portrayal of what it was like to die of this horrible disease. But. But another moment that really broke me is later when Judith has recovered and she asks her mom if there is a word for someone who was a twin and who lost their twin. Because if you lose your spouse, you're a widow or a widower, but what is the word for someone, or an orphan if you lose your parents, but there is no word for someone who was a sibling or in particular a twin and has lost their other half.

[D]

I feel like somehow I've mentioned this, like every podcast, but I'm a twin myself. When I read that line, I was like, absolutely, absolutely not thinking about this. Let's skip that. Like, I was like trying to Dissociate, but also just, like, could not. I was just like. So I was a puddle of emotion. That line is so cutting and it's so simple. It's just like, how do you express this grief? And often grief comes in questions. How could this happen? How is the sun still shining? How hasn't time stopped? What is the word? I can't. Chills.

[B]

I was going to say I love the simplicity of the paragraph where he dies, but it also is very anti. By, let's say, like Beth's death in Little Women, where a sunbeam comes through the window and it's like her soul just drifts towards the light.

[E]

And they smiled through their tears and thank God that Beth was well at last.

[B]

And this is a brutal death. One thing that I think I was, as a thought experiment, I was like, does this book work if there's no Shakespeare? And I think it absolutely does. But the idea, I think it is in some ways a wish fulfillment for every mother who would lose a child, who would think, and then they didn't get to live their life. So it comes to nothing and the memory fades. And to have a child immortalized in this way, I think is in some ways the best possible outcome of losing a child is to have them immortalized, no less in their father's love. If your father happens to be a beyond generation playwright of all time, greater generation, that helps.

[F]

Well, and there's that saying, too, that, like, you're not truly dead until there's no one left on earth to remember you. And by writing him into this play, he ensures that his son, actually immortalized, will live forever.

[B]

Yeah. Which is something so statistically rare. And that's, I think, a beautiful part of this.

[D]

Well, my last thing that I wanted to mention is similar. It's the death scene, but it's Agnes's thoughts or how Maggie writes what Agnes is going through. And that death scene. And my last thing is just a quote that I wanted to read.

[F]

You make me cry during this podcast recording too, mj.

[D]

The quote is inside Agnes's head. Her thoughts are widening out, then narrowing down, widening, narrowing over and over again. She thinks, this cannot happen. It cannot. How will we live? What will we do? How can Judith bear it? What will I tell people? How can we continue? What should I have done? Where is my husband? What will he say? How could I have saved him? Why didn't I save him? Why didn't I realize it was he who was in danger? And then the focus narrows and she thinks, he is dead. He is Dead. He is dead. The three words contain no sense for her. She cannot bend her mind to their meaning. It is an impossible idea that her son, her child, her boy, the healthiest and most robust of her children, should within days sicken and die. In addition to just how moving that is, the rhythm of it, the questioning of it, and the repetitiveness, the way she stretches out that scene overall of his death, tremendously. But the way she stretches out that sentence, the word that kept coming to mind is incantatory. And that's what that is. I am so moved by it. And I wanted to make sure I read that before we wrapped up this podcast.

[B]

It felt like church a little bit. I feel like there was something. She built a cathedral, I think, out of that scene, but without any overstatement because she didn't need the thing you need it for least, right?

[E]

Can I just say what the. This just builds on everything everyone said. But the very last line of the novel is exactly what we were talking about. It's her watching the play of Hamlet and seeing the scene. And it says, remember me? The ghost says, and that's the end. And that's the thing that we're left with.

[F]

I just got goosebumps just sitting here and I'm like. And I've read that multiple times and it gets me every time.

[D]

That is the last part of the book. But we also wanted to talk about the movie. Who here has seen the movie?

[F]

I have.

[D]

So that's Jen. Leah. I've seen it. Sarah, you have not.

[E]

I didn't want to. I was a book purist. I think it's such an internal book that rests so much on the writing. Didn't want to see the movie.

[D]

Sorry, Jen Leah, what are your thoughts on the movie? And we're going to try to stay away from exact spoilers of how they translate the book into the movie. We want listeners to be able to discover that for themselves. And the movie is just coming up. I'm just curious top line thoughts about the movie. What stood out brought big picture. Did you like it? Do you think people should read the book first or not talk to me.

[F]

I did really like it and I don't know why. I was a little maybe skeptical of how this could be translated screen. Maybe because Sarah said, like the writing in the book is and the way that oferrell puts the story together is so powerful. But I. I found it to be both very faithful in a lot of important ways, but also not faithful in ways that wouldn't have served the story in this Format. I really loved the performances. I think one of the things that Chloe Zhao does best is the way that she captures nature in her movies. And that is such an important part of this story, both in the book and in the movie. And I cried even more seeing it than I did reading the book.

[D]

Can confirm again, we saw it together. We sat next to each other.

[B]

Yeah.

[F]

We were sitting next to mj.

[D]

I could hear and feel Jen start to cry. And then you could hear sniffles in the theater. And I am not a movie crier. And I will say I did not cry in this movie. Instead, I felt like I was gonna have heart palpitations. I was unwell. It was one of the most intense experiences seeing a movie that I've ever had. Just because how Chloe Zhao translates the feelings that you get with this book into the movie. And there are differences and there are different storytelling decisions and all of that stuff, but what Jessie Buckley is able to communicate on her face, what those storytelling decisions do. I was just. I turned to Jen and I was like, can we please sit?

[F]

Yeah. I was just gonna say I loved that the credits start. And a lot of people, you know, this was like a press screening, so people gotta get back to their. Their jobs and their lives. And people started leaving. And I was, okay, I guess I'll put my coat on. And MJ just turned to me and said, can we stay through the credits? I was like, yes. I need to sit in the dark and listen to this score decompress for a little bit. And I will also. I don't. I will not spoil anything, but I feel like it really sticks the landing in a way that I found really moving.

[D]

What do you think, Leah?

[B]

First of all, I honestly can't picture anyone but Jessie Buckley in the part. Once you've seen it, I think, and. And that is always such or often a disconnect in films where it's not at all what you pictured. If you've read the book and the screening that I saw, I was able to see Chloe Zhao, the director, talk about it. And there is a large chunk in the ending that is not in the book. And she explained exactly why that is, that it continues after the book's final line. And she said it was so impactful on the page and on film. When they tried it, it just didn't work. But she also talked about how when she's been presenting this film, when it was premiering at festivals, how she is not a mother and so she has not lost a child. Jessie Buckley gave birth to her first child after this movie was finished. And Maggie o' Farrell has also not lost a child, but she does have a daughter who has severe anaphylaxis. So she lives with the idea that literally a stray peanut or what have you could take her daughter at any time. So I think it's this interesting synthesis of sort of art and experience in the film, because just to hear Chloe talk about channeling those emotions and finding this path, and I think a lot of times women are pigeonholed as only being able to talk about or make art about their experiences. And this sort of is further proof that's not necessarily the case.

[D]

I have a question for you, Leah, which is, you saw this film first, and before we even knew we were gonna do the book club. And then when we said that we were doing the book club, we were like, you should see the movie. What was it about it?

[B]

Because I think it's rare that someone takes a book with this strong of a point of view and this much richness of atmosphere and is able to bring that. And I. For example, I'll say White Noise did not work as a film. And that's a very interior novel made by someone. The film was made by Noah baumbach, who spent 20 years trying to make it. Sometimes these things just don't work. And I think listening to Chloe Zhao talk about it, you realized how anguished she was about trying to get it right. And I think if you've seen Nomadland or some of her other films, you realize this was an artist trying to do justice to another piece of art, and she really put her back into it.

[E]

Paul Mescal. How was my man Paul?

[B]

Paul Mescal, as Shakespeare is a much bigger presence in the film. But I don't think to the detriment. It doesn't unbalance the movie. It felt, I thought, still very true to the story.

[F]

I will say I saw the movie. I had started my reread of the book before we saw the movie, but I read most of it after having seen the movie. And once I had seen it, he was just in my head and I.

[E]

Was in my head, and I haven't even seen it.

[F]

He's right in exertion and man, can that man cry.

[D]

I was say, he's a crier. That man can cry. Before we wrap up our movie conversation.

[B]

We give away too much. I hope not.

[E]

And he does sadness really well. I've seen a bunch of movies where he's really sad.

[D]

The word that comes to mind when I think about this book. And then the performances in that movie. Is the word capacious. He does sadness so well. And I keep making this motion of stretching out. He does sadness. Really?

[B]

Sadness as taffy.

[D]

Exactly, exactly.

[F]

It's also gut wrenching, both in the book and in the performances in the film. You feel like Jussie Buckley especially. I'm like, I feel like I saw every single one of her guts that she just pulled out and poured into this role.

[D]

So my question is, is as we wrap up this movie conversation, read the book first. See the movie first. What's our recommendation?

[B]

Read the book, I think. And then it enriches the movie.

[F]

Yeah, I mean, that's generally my policy is that I try and would advise people to experience the story in the form in which it was created first before you experience it other forms. But I think for this one in particular, it enriches the viewing experience of the movie if you have read the book first. And Again, these are 400 year old spoilers. It's not gonna ruin anything in the movie if you know what happens in the book already.

[B]

There's also a great actress playing Shakespeare's mother. And I think she becomes. That's one character I think becomes a little richer. Emily Watson playing the mother.

[D]

So recommendation from yours truly at the book review podcast. Read the book first, then go see the movie. I say that as well. But then also do see the movie. Well, before we go, I just wanted to end with recommendations. I want to. What would you recommend readers who have finished Hamnet Pickup next. And that could be for whatever reason. It could be because it's another Shakespearean historical novel. It could be another grief book. It could be a book that you think, wow, we just went through it. Here's some uplift. I defer to you, but what would you recommend?

[B]

I have two very maybe obvious ones. One is Max Porter. Grief is the thing with feathers.

[D]

Love that book. We've mentioned it on the podcast before. That's one of my favorites.

[B]

Okay. Which is also about the loss in this case of a mother. And also characters without a name. Also a little supernatural with a bird. And then I think very obviously Lincoln and the Bardo by George Saunders. That is another loss of an 11 year old boy who happens to be named William, actually. But I think just in terms of parental grieving and reckoning, that one, that.

[D]

Was also one of mine, Lincoln Lombardo. I love that.

[B]

Sorry, did I steal your.

[D]

We're on the same page, for instance.

[F]

We're on the same wavelength.

[D]

And that was also inspired by just a few nuggets in the historical record. We knew that making a meal of.

[B]

Some very small pieces.

[D]

And for that one, there were contemporaneous reports that after Abraham Lincoln's son died, Lincoln visited the crypt multiple times to hold his body. And George Saunders takes that and is like, what was going on.

[B]

And also polyphonic in the same way.

[D]

So, oh, my gosh, we're on the same wavelength. Grief is the thing with feathers and Lincoln Lombardo.

[B]

We're either so obvious or so smart.

[D]

What about you, Jen?

[F]

I will also get to the book that I kept thinking about when I was reading. This is a piece of nonfiction, actually, which is Fee by Alexandra Fulton Fuller, which is her memoir, which came out last year, about the sudden death of her son. It is devastating, but also just so visceral. And it basically tracks the immediate events right before her son's death and then her first year processing. And I think what I saw a lot of parallels in that she talks a lot about wondering where her son has gone now that he is dead, which is a question that comes up in this book a lot. And also figuring out what she calls learning how to be the parent of a young ancestor and how you continue to love and care for your child even after they have left this world. And the other thing I would say is go read some Shakespeare. I would say all three of the plays that Sarah mentioned earlier, both Hamlet and also Macbeth and King there would make for a great trio. Or even better, if you can't read them, go find a theater near you and go see them.

[B]

Quite specific.

[D]

What about you, Sarah? What would you recommend?

[E]

Well, I'd say two things. One is the Yiyun Lee memoir about her two sons who both died by suicide. You know, it's such a taboo to be a parent whose child has died that way, and to have two sons who've died that way is beyond anybody's understanding, I think. And she really tries to make have an understanding of it and also to love her sons for who they were and to accept that this was part of their makeup and that the short lives they had were meaningful, really extraordinary.

[D]

Can you give us the title of that one?

[E]

Yeah, it's called the Things in Nature Merrily Grow.

[D]

I love that book, too. And one of the things you mentioned, except her two sons for who they are, one of the interesting things about that book is she writes in it about how when her first son died, she wrote a novel for him because that was his language. And this time she wrote a memoir because this particular son approached the world in a certain way. So in addition to accepting her sons for who they were, I feel like she let her sons and their lives drive her artistic decisions.

[E]

So interesting. Such a good point. The other thing I was gonna say is to go back to an old, happier book that has a child's death in it, the Accidental Tourist by Ann Tyler. It's about a woman mostly whose marriage has split up because their son died. But it's funny and lovely and it's about coming out of the numbness of grief into something beyond it with some redemption and fun to go back to.

[F]

I think I want to mention just one more thing that we haven't touched on, which is if you love the historical aspect of this historical fiction and want to know more about the world and life of William Shakespeare, you should go read Stephen Greenblatt.

[E]

Which of these books do you want.

[F]

To quote it in this book? Well, he has Will in the World, which is about Shakespeare himself, but he also. So definitely go read that. And then that's at the top of my personal post Hamnet reading list. I haven't read it yet, but what I have read and really enjoyed was Dark Renaissance, which is his biography of Christopher Marlowe, which came out earlier this year and is a portrait of this incredible artist and mad genius, but also really a portrait of what life was like and what living and making art was like in England in this time.

[E]

And James Shapiro's pretty good on Shakespeare, too.

[D]

My recommendations, I'm going to breeze through them since we've mentioned a few of them already. The other ones I had are an Elegy by Edward Hirsch. This is a book length poem written by Edward after his son died. And it is devastating and just beautiful. And to quote what Jodie Foster in Contact, they should have sent a poet. The way he writes about grief is so moving. Then we have I want to recommend Once More We Saw Stars by Jason Green. This is a memoir and and it's inspired by the death of his daughter Greta, who died in kind of this nightmare scenario.

[B]

It's a freak accident.

[D]

It was a freak accident. They're in New York. Part of a brick falls off of an eighth story hits Greta and she dies. And it's his memoir of trying to understand that grief and get through it. And it is devastating. And there was an excerpt that you can still find in New York Magazine and that went super viral. The fact that Greta's name comes to me unbidden is a testament to just how moving that is. And then this is slightly different, but I was thinking about the pairing that happens in Hamnet. And one book when I think about pairs is the Dutch House by Ann Patchett.

[F]

Oh, I love that.

[B]

I like that choice.

[D]

Part of it is that Paro Segal reviewed it for the Book Review or I guess the New York Times book section over on the Book Review and she is the person who pointed out at the top of that review just the number of pairs and how she sets the stage there. And I read it and loved it. And so it's a kind of a slant recommendation. But if you want something that's not necessarily about go grief but does have this kind of duality, play, go read the book.

[F]

Well, there are deaths and losses in that book too. I just, I'm a late latecomer to that bandwagon. But I just read that book this summer and absolutely loved it.

[C]

So good.

[D]

So good. And that is unfortunately all the time we have for today. Sarah, Jen, Leah, thank you so much. This is really fun, which is feel strange to say considering how sad this book was, but this conversation was fun.

[F]

I could have sat here and talked with you about it all day.

[D]

And thank you to our listeners who are listening along with us. And thank you to anyone who's read with us online. Again, we have an article up on the New York Times headlined Book Club Read Hamnet by Maggie o' Farrell with the Book Review. You can continue the conversation there. And as promised, the title of our December book. In December, we will be reading and discussing what We can know by Ian McEwan. McEwan is of course a literary master, perhaps best known for his book Atonement. What We Can Know is his latest. It came out this year. It's a book to get lost in. So we thought, let's talk about it for a book club. We have an article up right now in the New York Times headline Book Club Read what We can know by Ian McEwan with the book Review. Join the conversation there in the comments and then we will discuss the book on the podcast that airs on December 26th. We hope you'll join us. In the meantime, happy reading.

[C]

That was M.J. franklin Franklin in conversation with Jennifer Harlan, Leah Greenblatt, and Sarah Lyle about Maggie o' Farrell's Hamnet. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Thanks for listening.

[G]

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