Hamnet ~ A Capsule Book Review
Hamnet ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp
A little background information, please: English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) lived in the small town of Stratford-on-Avon, a hundred miles or so from London. The business of his family was making and selling gloves. When he was eighteen, he married a twenty-six-year-old woman named Anne Hathaway (1556-1623) who was expecting his child. William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway had three children: Susanna (1583-1649) and twins Hamnet (1585-1596) and Judith (1585-1662). Hamnet died, age eleven, in 1596. The cause of his death is not known. Since the plague was a persistent threat during this period of history, it might be assumed—or has been speculated—that Hamnet died of the plague. Nobody will ever know for sure.
Little is known about Shakespeare’s private life or the life of the family. What is known is that Shakespeare’s profession (playwright, actor and theatre manager) made it necessary for him to leave his family behind and spend most of his time in London. He tried to spend at least spend part of every year with his family in Stratford-on-Avon.
The novel Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is a purely speculative historical novel about Shakespeare’s family, mostly minus Shakespeare. While the title of the novel is Hamnet, it is more about Shakespeare’s wife, Anne, who is called Agnes here. (Apparently, as explained in a note at the end of the book, she went by either name.)
Hamnet, the novel, is told from the female point of view: that is, Anne Hathaway’s point of view. There is a lot of material here (female angst) about domestic concerns, raising children, dealing with difficult relatives and having a mostly absent husband. The great man himself is a secondary character in this story. If you’re looking for a book that gives insight into Shakespeare’s life and times, his private life and character, this isn’t it.
With her husband (William Shakespeare) away so much of the time, Anne (Agnes) has a lot of time to be jealous and to wonder what he might be doing (and with whom) in London. At the end of the book, she, along with her brother, Bartholomew, makes a surprise visit to London on horseback. She doesn’t find William at his lodgings, but she is told she might find him at the theatre. It’s providential (and coincidental) that she, an unlettered woman who never understood her husband’s passion for writing, finds him acting in his own production of his new play, Hamlet, as the ghost of the king’s father. She understands, for the first time, the alchemy that occurs from the spoken dialogue that her own husband writes, and how the play is, in a way, a tribute to their departed—and much lamented—son, Hamnet.
Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp
The Ones You Do ~ A Capsule Book Review
The Ones You Do ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp
Missouri writer Daniel Woodrell continues his saga of the lowbrow Shade family in the 1992 novel, The Ones You Do. This novel, of course, follows the earlier Shade novels Under the Bright Lights from 1986 and Muscle for the Wing from 1988. These three novels are set, for the most part, in the fictional town of St. Bruno, a small city located on the banks of a large U.S. river. (We assume the river is the Mississippi, although the name is never mentioned; neither is the state that St. Bruno is in.)
The principal character of The Ones You Do is John X. Shade. He is the sixty-two-year old patriarch of the Shade family. He is, possibly, one step up from being a bum. He has ruined his health with alcohol, smoking, and chasing after the ladies. His one accomplishment in life is that when he was younger, he was a competitive pool player. He made his living from betting on pool games and then taking the money from the suckers who played with him. His pool game isn’t what it used to be, however; his hands shake from alcoholism and his eyesight is shot. When he was in his twenties, he married a fourteen-year-old girl named Monique Blanqui (in a shotgun wedding) and fathered three sons (Tip, Rene and Francois) with her, whom he proceeded to abandon to pursue his own selfish pleasures.
Later in life, long after he and Monique are divorced, John X. Shade marries a much younger woman named Randi Tripp. She is a “singer,” calls herself the ‘Bama Butterfly, and is determined to become a big-time singer. She and John X. have a punkish, ten-year-old daughter named Etta, who has a mullet hairdo, a crucifix earring and bizarre makeup.
John X. Shade has been keeping a large sum of money ($47,000) for one Lunch Pumphrey, a sociopathic gunman, in the safe of the bar where he works. To repay John X. for all his failings as a husband, Randi Tripp steals the $47,000 and takes off for parts unknown to pursue her showbiz career. Well, as you might have guessed, Lunch Pumphrey wants his money and his plenty peeved that John X. Shade does not have it in the safe at the bar where he works. He will kill over a lot less.
Throughout the novel, Lunch Pumphrey pursues John X. Shade, and John X. Shade eludes him, barely, with his weird daughter, Etta, in tow. A showdown between Lunch Pumphrey and John X. Shade is inevitable and comes in the final chapter. John X. Shade’s family can forget about him showing up for his ex-wife Monique’s birthday party.
The Ones You Do is part crime novel, part Southern Gothic, part small-town elegy, part character study. One of the major themes of the novel is “the way things used to be but no longer are.” As with all Daniel Woodrell’s novels (I’ve read them all at least once), it’s good reading and well worth the time and small amount of effort it takes to read it.
Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp
Literary Fictions 