Meeting venue: by an open fire in Mark W's living room, 4th November 2021
This is a simple story in many ways. It is a very ‘human’ book, not political, and, although classed as a historical novel, it’s not really historical in any other sense than that it is a reflection of the lives of fairly ordinary people at the end of the 16th Century – possibly one of its charms.
As we know, it centres around the death of William Shakespeare’s only son, twin to Judith and younger sibling of Susanna. What is interesting, and perhaps contributes to the uniqueness of the book’s viewpoint, is that it relegates Shakespeare himself to bit-part player, (as he was in real life while running his company). He is never named, so the baggage his latter-day reputation brings with him doesn’t overshadow the story Maggie O’Farrell wants to tell.
This story is that of Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (who we know as Anne Hathaway), of the quite commonplace death of one of her young children in a modest town house in a Midlands market town in 1596, and of the way this affects her and the family around her.
The book received a broadly positive reception from the BBBC, and scores ranged from a not bad 6.5 to a positively euphoric 10! Steve, whose choice it was, had read it before and he had a comment about the wisdom or otherwise of re-reading a book that you enjoyed first time round, which will be appended to the end of this summary.
Things we liked:
An elegant, accessible prose style that didn’t get in the way of the story and was a welcome relief from some of the somewhat heavier-going fare of recent months (JH). It was pleasing to note that historical novels didn’t always have to be as impenetrable as some previous club reads such as Wolf Hall, for example (MT).
The structure: the two principal narrative strands (young Agnes, older married Agnes) were cleverly woven together; no-one found this a permanent obstacle though some said it took a bit of getting used to.
O’Farrell’s ability to create vivid, believable characters was remarked upon. Brother Bartholomew was cited by MW, AA, CB as a character they particularly liked, but all members of the Shakespeare family were well-formed, distinct and believable. Her descriptions of the details of everyday family life were powerful, not least around her existence at the farm before getting together with The Latin Tutor, when he sees her across the fields with her falcon. Several good words for the apple-shed encounter as well!
Likewise the author’s ability to write convincingly about the almost shamanic relationship Agnes developed with the natural world around her – so she became someone the townsfolk of Stratford respected, though at the expense of good relationships with the more traditional medical experts in the town. The appearance of the doctor in full quarantine paraphernalia was vivid and effective, incorporating a hint of humour.
Fantastic, lyrical descriptions: ‘’Night-time in the town, a deep, black silence lies over the streets, broken only by the hollow lilt of an owl, calling for its mate. A breeze slips invisibly, insistently through the streets, like a burglar seeking an entrance. It plays with the tops of the trees, tipping them one way, then the other. It shivers inside the church bell, making the brass vibrate with a single low note. It ruffles the feathers of the lonely owl, sitting on a rooftop near the church.’’ (CB)
Almost everyone commented on the amazing description of childbirth, when Agnes takes herself into the woods, watched over by the spirit of her mother, to give birth to Susanna:
“Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the relentlessness of it. It is like trying to stand in a gale, like trying to swim against the current of a flooded river, like trying to lift a fallen tree. Never has she been more sensible of her weakness, of her inadequacy. She has always felt herself to be a strong person: she can push a cow into milking position, she can douse and stir a load of laundry, she can lift and carry her small siblings, a bale of skins, a bucket of water, an armful of firewood. Her body is one of resilience, of power: she is all muscle beneath smooth skin. But this is something else. Something other. It laughs at her attempts to master it, to subdue it, to rise above it. It will, Agnes fears, overtake her. It will seize her by the scruff of her neck and plunge her down, under the surface of the water.” (RV, SC)
O’Farrell’s deep dive into the complexities of human emotion. Agnes, living without the man she loves by her side, becomes prey to private uncertainties and fears about what he might be up to in London, especially once he has torn himself away after the funeral (a powerful scene): “It’s as if her mother needs London, and all that he does there, to rub off him before she can accept him back, Judith observes”. AA pointed out that people would have lost close relatives more frequently than now – however O’Farrell has herself remarked that maternal grief would have been no less powerful for that fact.
The passages leading up to Hamnet’s death were memorable – particularly in which the bed is brought downstairs to the fireside in a desperate attempt to sweat the fever out, amid arguments over which remedies might work, and which were useless (dried toad, for example). Our medical consultants assure us that the descriptions of the physical effects of bubonic plague were ‘spot on’ (AA)
The powerful climax of the book involving the trip to London to confront her husband – cleverly presenting the mayhem of London life through the eyes of a ‘simple country girl’, as she realises that his presentation of his play ’Hamlet’ is his own way of expressing his grief, that he is as profoundly affected by Hamnet’s death as she is, but that he has found his own individual way to deal with it. This is the only point in the book that there’s a form of homage to Shakespeare’s own talents.
The ending: neat, revelatory and satisfying for many of us – a much better ending that some more laboured efforts we’ve read in the past.
A number commented on the fact that the book had additional topical resonance (though this could not have been an original intention of the author) through the parallels with the current pandemic. Quarantine, theatres closed by order of the Queen, no-one allowed to gather in public…
O’Farrell’s ploy of removing William Shakespeare to the list of bit-part players – never naming him other than by what he meant to her: The Latin Tutor, for example, latterly ‘husband’. This for most had the effect of enabling us to concentrate on the story of a woman living a hard, sometimes desperate life, yet striving at the same time to be fulfilled through the lives of her children, her husband and through the use of her own undoubted intelligence. We felt that this was an original and eloquently expressed representation of such an ‘ordinary’ woman’s life in the late 16th Century.
Things we were less convinced about:
The chapter dealing with the passage of the plague-carrying flea from Venice to England was enjoyed by some as adding additional colour and depth to the story, but others found it a pointless digression, adding little and not telling us anything we didn’t already know.
The ‘spoiler’ at the start, in which it is stated that the child dies, took a couple of members by surprise, as they were unaware of the back story of Hamnet’s death. However, for others, this in no way detracted from the enjoyment of the story as it was for a number of us already known; indeed the fact had been a central part of the book’s publicity at launch as O’Farrell made it clear that it was learning the fact of Hamnet’s death at school that started the thought processes leading to writing the book. But it demonstrates the dangers for publishers in making assumptions about the level of historical knowledge of its potential readership.
The degree to which Agnes descended into the depths of grief after Hamnet’s death was seen as over the top by some. RV: ‘I was happy to return to read it, it was an easy read; and yet, over-wrought in places... Obviously I am aware that grief can do terrible things to people, but this seemed SO extreme, especially given that up to 50% of all children did die in medieval England before reaching puberty, that the death of a child would be not exactly commonplace but largely expected. Yet both she, and WS, are so overcome. So I’m not totally convinced by both of their terrible, mind-altering grief, as child death was so common.” As mentioned, O’Farrell has defended this by saying that maternal response would not necessarily have been diminished simply because of the higher incidence of child death.
SC at times had some sympathy with Mary: “Mary, Susanna knows, is of the opinion that grief is all very well in moderation, but there comes a time when it is necessary to make an effort. She is of the opinion that some people make too much of things. That life goes on.”
Some suggestion (JH) that O’Farrell’s presentation of the hazy ‘facts’ around the death were rather manipulative – she marshalled the information very much to meet her own ends. Arguably however this is what authors do – particularly crime writers, who drip-feed the key information through as it suits them.
SC’s response to re-reading the book for the club was that he rather wished he hadn’t. The second reading made him more critical – of things like the use of present tense; of the extreme depths of Agnes’ at times seemingly endless grief, for example, whereas at the first time of reading he had found himself totally engaged, captured, absorbed by the book.
An appropriate final word comes from JH:
‘The final pages of the book were extraordinary – particularly the way that the battlement scene in Hamlet is used to share a parent’s grief “Hamlet, here, on this stage, is two people, the young man, alive, and the father, dead. He is both alive and dead. Her husband has brought him back to life, in the only way he can. As the ghost talks, she sees that her husband, in writing this, in taking the role of the ghost, he has changed places with his son. He has taken his son’s death and made it his own; he has put himself in death’s clutches, resurrecting the boy in his place.”’
We did, on the whole, like the book, some of us very much indeed. All of us found something to appreciate, and it ended up being one the better-scoring reads of recent years, logging an average of 7.92.
