Hamnet

About this book

As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.

On a summer’s day in 1596 in Stratford upon Avon, a young girl takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches for help, moving through a house where the adults are absent, and asking a question that has no comfort in it. Why is nobody at home.

Their mother, Agnes, is more than a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither of them knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.

Hamnet tells the story of Agnes and Will, and of the love that draws them together, set against a loss that threatens to tear their lives apart. It turns towards a son whose life has been all but forgotten, and holds him in the centre of the family’s grief, as the absence he leaves behind begins to shape what comes after.