My Friday Post: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Published on by Margaret

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

My extracts today are from Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, one of my favourite authors, and the winner of this year’s Woman’s Prize for Fiction. I’ve just started to read it.

The book begins:

A boy is coming down the stairs.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your  ereader . If you have to improvise, that is okay. *Find a snippet, short and sweet, but no spoilers!

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Hamnet climbs the stairs, breathing hard after his run through the town. It seems to drain his strength, putting one leg in front of the other, lifting each foot to each stair. He uses the handrail to haul himself along.

~~~

What a coincidence that both the opening paragraph and the extract from page 56 are about Hamnet climbing the stairs – first down and then up.

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? 

This is historical fiction inspired by Hamnet, Shakespeare’s son and is a story of the bond between twins.

13 thoughts on “My Friday Post: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell”

  2. Oh, this does sound intriguing, Margaret! I’d heard of it, but not yet read it. I hope you’ll enjoy it and I look forward to your thoughts about it.

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  13. I loved the beginning of this book, but found the romance part tedious. Apparently it got better at the end again, but I couldn’t get past the wild untamed girl/poet teacher romance trope…
    But it won the Women’s Prize so what do I know?

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