What to read after ‘Hamnet’ — and why you should have been reading Maggie O’Farrell all along
Director Chloé Zhao’s film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet has won two BAFTAs. Here is your starter guide to O'Farrell, whose 10th book will release later this year
Six years after Hamnet was first published, its author, Maggie O’Farrell, has never been more popular, and for good reason.
Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s film adaptation of the novel – which explores the anguish and troubled marriage of William Shakespeare (essayed by Paul Mescal) and his wife (Jessie Buckley) — reimagined here as Agnes, rather than the historical Anne Hathaway — after they lose their 11-year-old son Hamnet, took home two British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs)for Outstanding British Film and Best Leading Actor, which Buckley won for her heart-wrenching portrayal of a grieving mother.
The film, which grossed over $70 million at the worldwide box office, has collectively racked up nominations for 11 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), eight Academy Awards (Oscars), and six Golden Globes. The Irish author’s next novel, Land, a 19th-century historical fiction due later this year, has already secured a film adaptation by the Hamnet producer Liza Marshall of Hera Pictures.
In part due to the film’s roaring popularity, many readers are just discovering O’Farrell, who has been writing for 25 years. Land will be her 10th book, while Hamnet was her eighth. For those hoping to pursue more of her work, here is where to begin:
Hamnet
Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet has been adapted for screen by Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao. (source: amazon.in/AI)
The novel, which earned O’Farrell the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, centers on William Shakespeare’s herbalist wife, Agnes, a woman reduced to a footnote in the playwright’s biographies. Left behind in Stratford-upon-Avon with her children, while her husband wrote plays that would immortalise him as the most famous English playwright. In O’Farrell’s hands, she finds love, births and mothers children and grieves the tragic loss of her child. This is O’Farrell’s great subject – women who existed in the margins of someone else’s story.
The Marriage Portrait (2022)
Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait is inspired by Robert Browning’s poem, poem ‘My Last Duchess’.
Anyone who has taken an English literature course will remember Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess”, a poem about a Duke, who boasts about how he permanently ended his too-cheerful wife’s smiles. The Marriage Portrait (2022), gives voice to Lucrezia de’ Medici, the teenage bride immortalised by Browning as the woman in the painting, murdered by a husband who couldn’t stand her smile. O’Farrell gives her an inner life so vivid that reading the novel feels like watching someone claw her way out of a portrait frame. The Florence she conjures is claustrophobic and the marriage is a cage gilded with the finest gold leaf.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox takes readers to the Victorian asylums. (Source: amazon.in/AI)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006) gives voice to the “difficult girls” who disappeared into Victorian psychiatric institutions for the crime of wanting and feeling too much. Esme is 16 when she is committed by her family for being too fond of a half-Indian boy. Sixty years later, when the asylums shut down and the long-forgotten inmates are reunited with their estranged families, she emerges perfectly sane. The novel cuts between her institutional voice and her great-niece Iris’s present-day attempts to understand what happened.
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I Am, I Am, I Am
Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am is structured around 17 encounters with death. (Source: amazon.in/AI)
O’Farrell memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am (2017) is structured around 17 encounters with death. It is also about her daughter, who has a severe immune condition, which could make a simple cold catastrophic. O’Farrell writes about what it means to love someone whose survival depends on constant vigilance. The prose is so stripped back that one feels physically winded. If you read nothing else, read this.
Where to Start
If you are discovering O’Farrell after watching her film start with Hamnet. Then follow Agnes into The Marriage Portrait. If you want the full range of what she can do, read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and I Am, I Am, I Am back to back.
Aishwarya Khosla is a key editorial figure at The Indian Express, where she spearheads and manages the Books & Literature and Puzzles & Games sections, driving content strategy and execution. Aishwarya's specialty lies in book reviews, literary criticism and cultural commentary. She also pens long-form feature articles where she focuses on the complex interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She is a proud recipient of The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections. This fellowship required intensive study and research into political campaigns, policy analysis, political strategy, and communications, directly informing the analytical depth of her cultural commentary.
As the dedicated author of The Indian Express newsletters, Meanwhile, Back Home and Books 'n' Bits, Aishwarya provides consistent, curated, and trusted insights directly to the readership. She also hosts the podcast series Casually Obsessed. Her established role and her commitment to examining complex societal themes through a nuanced lens ensure her content is a reliable source of high-quality literary and cultural journalism.
Her extensive background across eight years also includes previous roles at Hindustan Times, where she provided dedicated coverage of politics, books, theatre, broader culture, and the Punjabi diaspora.
Write to her at aishwaryakhosla.ak@gmail.com or aishwarya.khosla@indianexpress.com. You can follow her on Instagram:
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Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet has been adapted for screen by Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao. (source: amazon.in/AI)
Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait is inspired by Robert Browning’s poem, poem ‘My Last Duchess’.
Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox takes readers to the Victorian asylums. (Source: amazon.in/AI)
Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am is structured around 17 encounters with death. (Source: amazon.in/AI)