Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. The importance of naming, the presence of silence.

It whispers about what we hide, what we keep silent about, what goes through us all in one way or another, what destroys us. She talks about death and loss, memories and silences. Maggie O'Farrell's work is mostly intertwined with female characters, with very intimate, personal and delicate situations. Death, suicide, love and pain; O'Farrell takes us by the hand down paths that are dark and fantastic, but still totally real for all of us.

With “Hamnet" this path is a dream, a story that becomes a constant jump between the past, the present and the future. It is about memory. A persistent connection of what was and what is. In simple words we would say it is the story of Agnes, that unknown, misunderstood wife of the great writer William Shakespeare, it is also the story of the death of his little son Hamnet and the pain of this experience. A historical novel, a novel about Shakespeare's mourning perhaps. Others upon encountering the book on shelves will perhaps think that it is about Hamnet, perhaps his childhood story, his memoirs. But the truth is that O'Farrell's text goes much further, is infinitely deeper and becomes a journey of evocation, pain, love, loss... mainly constant loss, is what accompanies this reading on each page. The ghost is an always latent figure, a need for love in each character; the child, Hamnet, Agnes, 'the husband', all so alone, so broken, and this perhaps transports the reader to his own loneliness and loss, to his own ghosts. O'Farrell is by far a master when it comes to describing deep emotions and feelings. Each paragraph can truly be savored and the result is a bittersweet, hurtful and beautiful feeling. Many readers may find this text somewhat excessive, overloaded with adjectives, very evocative. But for others, it is simply a provocative text, wonderfully constructed, with magical elements, images, with a very interesting semiotic that always connects with other authors and readings. This is undoubtedly what a good book should create: interconnections with other worlds and words, with other stories from other times.

Pain in such a poetic way, so subtle and piercing that it becomes something real on the skin, that is 'Hamnet'.

From the first pages the absences are present. That child alone, tirelessly searching for someone to help him, in a gray and apparently empty world, already speaks to us about this ghost, subtly warns us of what will become real. It is a void that the reader experiences, the child in his lonely world, and that later throughout each page will be a reality for all the characters. The constant feeling of emptiness is very interesting in O'Farrell's writing, it seems that she proposes it to us from the beginning and does not expect acceptance. Loneliness envelops everyone, it actually tells us what will happen, and yet we come to expect something different, we hope for a happy ending, perhaps more joyful and less poetic, less tragic, less beautiful.

No less wonderful is the treatment it gives to the female figure. First within the social context of the 16th century and the ideas of evil and witchcraft connected to free women. Independence, intelligence and knowledge, manual work and healing, although taken advantage of by the community, are stigmatized in the protagonist who is always judged and marked. Here again, the writer presents a reality through fiction and questions not only the evil and spiritual connotation that these figures have, but also their own understanding. On the other hand, the rescue that she proposes and achieves of the figure of Agnes, that not so well-known wife, rather stained by foreign, invented sins and hatred, is wonderful. Not only is she the main character, her story, her experiences and thoughts are, it is also through her that she extends the various themes and emotions of the book, it is with Agnes with whom magic, pain, death and silence takes shape and walks, speaks and suffers.

Joos van Cleve , Saint Jerome in His Study (detail)

Agnes is all of us. Every woman, every girl, every mother. In her we can all find ourselves in different stages of life and the experience of our femininity becomes a container for the secrets and sorrows of each reader. O'Farrell manages to extend a hug with the conjugation of fiction and reality that embodies Agnes, and in fact, each woman within 'Hamnet'.

Finally, returning to the idea of the 'ghost' always present in one figure or another in the novel, it is important to mention how it transports it to the image of Shakespeare and its absence of a name within the text. The power of the word, of that which is named, is very vivid in his narration. Shakespeare does not exist, he is not named, he is not present. Even so, we know it is him, but his ghost is the one who accompanies us. Isn't it an elegant and delicate way to connect his work with 'Hamlet'? Can't we perhaps find in this ghost precisely the connection of silence and naming? It is perhaps this ghost of the father who accompanies us that invisibly unites us to Shakespeare's letters, he is the one who guides us with Hamnet in his short life and who speaks to us at the same time about a forgotten reality, ignored rather, about Agnes and the women of the past.

This absent Shakespeare, the father and husband who get lost between the pages, may well be the way that the writer chose to 'forget' the masculine and give prominence to the feminine in the story and demonstrate what the heart and memory of a woman can keep.

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