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Hamnet
- Winner of The Women's Prize for Fiction 2020 - the No. 1 Bestseller
- Narrated by: Daisy Donovan
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020
The Sunday Times best seller
Two extraordinary people. A love that draws them together. A loss that threatens to tear them apart.
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.
Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a kestrel and its mistress; flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; and a glovemaker's son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.
Critic Reviews
"A thing of shimmering wonder." (David Mitchell)
"Richly sensuous...something special." (The Sunday Times)
What listeners say about Hamnet
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Barbara
- 20-05-2020
Beautifully written and read
A great story with very fine historical detail and beautiful language. Highly recommended. Excellent reading.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 17-05-2020
Savour this one, I wanted it to go on and on!
Memorable, emotional and beautifully written and performed, I absolutely loved it and you will too!
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6 people found this helpful
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- Fred
- 13-11-2021
Boring
Hamnet’s death went on and on and on until finally I said ‘enough’. Author tries hard to be descriptive but frequently uses the wrong adjectives- needs a better thesaurus.
Narrator often whispers when it is appropriate or for emphasis but this is a disaster for audio listeners because you (I) fail to hear it. So you either move on or stop what you are doing, rewind, increase volume, listen again, decrease volume and then go back to doing what you were doing. Very very annoying!
Daisy, sorry but think about who is your audience!
Narrator’s need to tread a fine line between being monotone and acting. If monotone they are monotonous and if they try to act the characters, they influence how the listener interprets the characters and the story.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Cas22
- 19-03-2021
Beautifully written and imagined story
It was a joy to listen to this book. The powerful and evocative writing, coupled with superb narration, took me into another time and place and gave me a glimpse into the life of Shakespeare and his long-suffering wife and children. It was a slow but immersive read.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Keza
- 06-02-2021
Breathtaking.
I could not stop listening to this. The reader was magnificent but the writing even more so. I cannot praise it enough.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 19-01-2021
Breathtaking
Beautifully written and beautifully read. O’Farrell creates a textured world so real you can could almost reach out and touch it.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Ms LuLu
- 24-08-2020
superb in all respects
I finished this last week and can't stop thinking about it. It's a marvellous story, beautifully written, and narrated so well. I loved it. Although a fictionalised account of Shakespeare's home life, it felt like a really good approximation, and based on good historical material. An enriching read.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 26-07-2020
Gripping, tragic, beautiful
What a remarkable talent is Maggie O’Farrell to be able to re-envisage the life and times of Shakespeare and his family and the pain that each one bears at the loss of Hamnet.. memorable!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 17-03-2021
The perfect narrator for the story!
Oh this was such a beautiful, vivid, descriptive story. I felt I was privileged to know each character so deeply. Agnes was so compelling I was sad it came to an end.
Looking for your next book? Choose this.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jennifer
- 18-12-2021
This is why we read!
Exquisitely written with sensuously poetic rhythm and a balance of words that are particularly enjoyable to savour during the listening to the narrator, Daisy Donovan. Descriptions, even those of drudge and the commonplace, take on new form through the use of tricolon, refreshing metaphors and juxtaposition, breathing life into this tragic love story. Maggie O'Farrell deserves accolades for this tale that interweaves the known with the unknown so thoroughly. This is a novel that will endure.
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1 person found this helpful