1. Hamnet: Motherhood, Nature and Theatre

So Hamnet, the novel, follows Agnes as she negotiates marriage, childbirth, sickness and ultimately death and grief.

The first half of the novel, I would say, alternates between two timelines.

We actually start with Hamnet, which I think is brilliant and potentially something that the film misses, misses a trick there, which we'll talk about.

But we start with Hamnet and we I suppose we go through him trying to find his mother because his twin sister Judith is sick and she has what they call the pestilence, what we know to be the bubonic plague.

And so we are dealing with the after effects of that sickness.

And it's an incredibly difficult timeline to read through.

But on the other hand, and I think what O'Farrell does so cleverly, is she alternates between another timeline, which is, I guess, 11 years prior.

And it is the story of how Agnes and...

William, met.

And it's almost funny.

It's kind of like a rom-com.

We have a meet-cute where he sees, you know, he's the Lassen tutor who's come to the house to tutor the boys, where Agnes is the eldest daughter.

And he sees her with her, I think it's a kestrel? Yes.

Yeah.

And he first thinks that... that she's a serving girl.

And then actually, I think he mistakes her for a young man and then realizes that it is the oldest daughter.

So did you find it funny to begin with some of those moments?

Yeah.

And I guess there is something really interesting about this switching between the more lighthearted romantic story and the story of Judith's illness and Hamnet's illness and eventually Hamnet's death, that gives the reader a kind of break from the intensity of this storyline about Hamnet's death.

So we kind of move back and forth.

But I did find that it's kind of, you know, the romance very lighthearted and playful and beautiful.

It is, it is.

And the novel absolutely captures the humour and the...

Yeah, the sort of, I guess, the meet-cute between these two young people.

I think what, because we need to talk about the film, I guess, and we need to talk about the fact that some people came out of the cinema and felt, I'm going to say, maybe slightly manipulated due to the kind of full-on, unrelentless, raw representation of grief.