by Maggie O’Farrell
Reviewed by Linda:
This highly acclaimed novel concerns the lives of a penniless Latin tutor; his wife, Agnes, an eccentric but gifted healer, and their three children in Stratford-upon-Avon in sixteenth-century England. Few in the community expected the young man to amount to much, least of all to become the greatest writer England has ever known. The childhoods of Will and Agnes are told in fascinating detail, and then we are shown the inner workings of the family they create. The death of their young son, Hamnet, from bubonic plague and its impact on them all is heartbreaking.