Review of 'Hamnet' by Maggie O'Farrell

Loved this so much...not read Maggie O'Farrell before, but saw her talking about this book at last year's Hay Festival, which was of course online like everything at that point. She seemed really interesting but also sympathetic and reflective. Then I forgot about it until a friend lent it to me.

It's so beautifully written, with an interesting narrative structure (different time periods) and it feels really contemporary, with a plague background and so much uncertainty about the way that the infection process and the disease works. And the love, and the longing, and the characters who are so different from each other but so well depicted, and the descriptions of the interior settings...both kinds of interior actually, the ones inside the characters and the ones that the characters are inside of. Just beautiful. I don't often have a cry with a book, but I did with this.