Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel Hamnet has received a silver screen adaptation worthy of its literary chops. Whether you are a fan of the novel or film, here are five of O’Farrell’s best books for Hamnet fans.
The Marriage Portrait
Fans of Hamnet and historical fiction will relish the Northern Irish author’s The Marriage Portrait, which takes place in 1560s Italy. In the introductory note of the book, the reader is told that its heroine, 16-year-old Lucrezia de’ Medici, is dead within a year of her marriage to the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso II d’Este. The opening explains that while the official cause of Lucrezia’s death was putrid fever, it was rumoured that she had been murdered by her husband. Although the end is known from the beginning, the reader is intrigued and eager to find out how the characters will succumb to their fate.
This Must Be The Place
Following the story of US academic Daniel O’Sullivan and his former film-star wife Claudette Wells, O’Farrell’s 2016 novel takes place in rural Donegal. Disappearing at the height of her fame, Wells became “one of the most speculated-about enigmas of our time”, bolting up in a former hunting lodge with her two children and second husband in the northwest. Told in the form of vignettes, multi-perspective narration and using non-linear story telling not dissimilar to the storytelling in Hamnet, This Must Be The Place is a triumph of O’Farrell’s technical skill as a writer. Described in an Irish Times review as “a book not just about being lost but about loss – loss of love, of freedom, of family, of the life you thought you were going to lead“.
Instructions for a Heatwave
Robert Riordan, a retired assistant bank manager in north London, on a sweltering Thursday morning in July 1976, tells his wife, Gretta, that he’s going out to get a newspaper, and doesn’t come back. Another novel with disappearance at its heart, Instructions for a Heatwave tells the story of how Riordan’s departure brings together his family, who are all masterfully profiled by O’Farrell. Themes of emigration, identity and, like in Hamnet, family are played out as the mystery of Robert’s disappearance and 1976 heatwave simmer in the background.
READ MORE
The Hand that First Held Mine
As is typical of O’Farrell’s style, The Hand that First Held Mine makes use of an unconventional narration style when juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated stories in her 2010 novel. The first storyline follows Lexie Sinclair, a young woman who leaves her rural town for London in the 1950s and begins an affair with an older man. The second storyline depicts the experience of Elina Vilkuna, a Finnish-Swedish woman in modern London who is struggling with post-partum depression. The two women’s stories are revealed to be intrinsically linked.
After You’d Gone
O’Farrell’s debut novel, published in 2000, sets out the author’s striking style, with shifting timelines and perspectives. After You’d Gone follows Alice, who is comatose after a serious traffic accident, and explores three generations of women: Alice and her sisters Kirtsy and Beth, their mother Ann and their grandmother Elspeth. The themes that have since become O’Farrell’s signature – motherhood, grief and trauma -are first chronicled in this stunning debut.
[ Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell to set new novel in post-Famine IrelandOpens in new window ]
