Hamnet

By: Maggie O'Farrell

Narrated by: Jessie Buckley

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn, directed by ACADEMY AWARD® winner Chloé Zhao.

The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the years leading up to the production of his great play.

"Miraculous... brilliant... A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer — or curse... A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down—a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.

I am gobsmacked.

This is what fiction can be—and easily the best audiobook I have listened to.

Full of magic and love

Such a lovely and heartbreaking story of love and grief and beauty. Jessie Buckley is a wonderful performer!

Jessie Buckley’s new narration is sublime

What an absolutely gorgeous, emotional reading of this beautiful book. This was my second time “reading” it but first time listening to it in audiobook format, and I was just blown away by Jessie’s performance. Maggie O’Farrell is such an elegant writer, and Jessie is such a talented actress. What a pairing!

Beautiful!

Beautifully written. Loved the concept and speculation on the unknown details of a life. Probably my favorite Maggie OFarrell book yet.

1570’s were yesterday

An extraordinary, richly imaginative and historically based tale that is enriched by Jessie Buckley‘s superb narration. I am entranced and ready to reread Shakespeare and the next Maggie O’Farrell novel.