Breathtaking is maybe an overused adjective. It is often applied to views and sometimes to stories. My interest in this word right now is that several times whilst reading these books I found that I had stopped breathing. My breath had been taken away. Not something that happens frequently at all.
It started when non-essential shops were allowed to open again (how are bookshops non-essential I wonder?) and I decided to walk into Waterstones rather than press the buttons and buy from Amazon. There were only a few people in the shop so the girl had time to chat as I paid for my book. She pointed to a book right at the front of the counter and asked me if I had read it. The answer was no and she didn’t have to work too hard to persuade me to add a copy to my bag. The book was Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. I knew of this writer but had never read her. What a treat it is to find a new author. What a treat also to talk books with someone. It is something that I experienced several times in these lockdown months. A short, sometimes very short, conversation with someone with whom you connect can change your whole feeling about the day. So, although I am clear that the Waterstone’s girl was simply doing her job and doing it very well, it was also uplifting. Win, win.
I have long known that Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet and wrote a play called Hamlet. I thought at some point the book might sort out this strange puzzle but it didn’t really, apart from stating that the two spellings were used interchangeably, even in parish records.
In Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell uses the familiar device of taking a known historical situation and making it the basis for her own invented narrative. She originates from Northern Ireland and now lives in Scotland. Her writing has this gorgeous numinous quality, other worldly, something that I maybe associate particularly with those from a Celtic or Gaelic background.
Hamnet is known to have died young, of the plague. It was strange to read of this, having lived through this last year. Strange to remember that there have been many other such years with families decimated by disease and fear. Many uncomfortable parallels become evident with the wearing of masks and the carrying of lucky talismanic objects. It may be a herbal posy or a small bottle of sanitiser; the purpose is the same. The power of O’Farrell’s writing at the point of the child’s death is one of the instances where I truly stopped breathing for a moment. The poignancy and the madness of the situation are almost unbearable but the quality of the writing is sublime.
The second book I read by Maggie O’Farrell is I Am, I Am, I Am. This is a memoir rather than a biography or autobiography and I find that I prefer the former. Whereas an autobiography is by nature chronological and linear, a memoir can take any object or remembrance as a starting point and be all the more interesting for that freedom. A memoir by Penelope Lively comes to mind called ‘A House Unlocked,’ where she takes a series of objects and uses them as starting points to remember different events in her life. Even more inventive is Margaret Drabble’s book: ‘The pattern in the carpet.’ This is basically a personal history with jigsaws! Her own family history is explored alongside the history of jigsaws, a favourite pastime during her whole life.
Maggie O’Farrell’s take on the memoir is to use seventeen brushes with death that have beset her in her life so far. That may sound rather morbid but for some reason it isn’t. In the blurb, the writer Tracy Chevalier says that: ‘I have never read a book about death that has made me feel so alive.’ And I understand what she is saying. The writing is courageous, unsettling and strangely life enhancing. I had to keep turning the pages. Interestingly, a sermon that Keith preached recently was based on the I am statements in the gospel of St John. I sat in church, rather startled and wondered if in the title of this memoir Maggie O’Farrell was referencing these biblical verses … or not. Something on which I will ponder.
And now I have read two more novels by the same writer. She has I think booked her own shelf on my bookcase! In ‘The hand that first held mine’ and ‘After you’d gone,’ O’Farrell shows a great capacity for coping with time slips, flashbacks and stories that exist sometimes in parallel worlds and sometimes that she interweaves with great skill, until they come together and all is made clear to you at the end. This makes, in my opinion, for a very satisfying read but one that does require of its reader a degree of concentration.
There are eight novels in all so I have several more delights in store. I hope you enjoy her writing if you choose to investigate further.