The Book: Hamnet (2020), by Maggie O'Farrell. 320 pages
Free event!
What if I have not finished reading this book, or have not read it at all?
That's okay! We hope you will come to this book club meeting, no matter how much of the book you have read. This book features many compelling themes and ideas that will be fascinating to discuss. Everybody who comes to this book club meeting will be able to participate and enjoy the discussion.
Hamnet is a 2020 historical fiction novel by Maggie O'Farrell. It is a fictional account of William Shakespeare and Agnes Hathaway's son, Hamnet, who died at the age of eleven in 1596, and focuses on his parents' grief.
What to Bring? You do not need to bring anything. Simply read the book OR listen to the audio book OR watch the movie. It can be useful if you bring your physical or digital copy of the book.
Who? This is a fun book club event that men and women from the neighborhood potluck list are invited to, along with everybody else who is interested.
Fun Book Club: This will be the 48th monthly meeting of this book club. We had so much fun at the all of the meetings so far, with wonderful, fascinating discussions with great neighbors and new friends. If you like books or interesting discussions... or simply want to have fun meeting new people, I highly recommend RSVP-ing for this event.
About the Book: The book relates to the real-life death of William Shakespeare's only son Hamnet who was buried on 11 August 1596. It describes the circumstances of William Shakespeare's marriage with Agnes Hathaway (portrayed as a herbalist), the birth of their children and subsequent death of Hamnet, potentially from bubonic plague, which influenced Shakespeare's subsequent writing in the tragedy of his play Hamlet. The story includes some of the known facts of Shakespeare's life in the Tudor Period but also includes myths and other imagined fictions surrounding Hamnet's death.
In 2020, the book won the Women's Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; that December, it was also chosen as Waterstones' Book of the Year. The following year, it was named "Novel of the Year" at the Dalkey Literary Awards, was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It was described in Literary Review as "a rich story by any stretch of the imagination, and O'Farrell's stretches much, much further than most of ours."
To RSVP, use your standard PotluckDinner.org RSVP buttons, or use the form at the top of this page, or email: rsvp@potluckdinner.org [or] text: 480-269-5823