All tagged William Shakespeare

Learwife

Learwife

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

J. R. Thorp’s debut novel, Learwife (2021) is a lyrical, internal monologue of King Lear’s widow during some undefined point in British medieval history. The novel opens as news of Lear’s death, and that of his three daughters, reaches a convent in northern England. Here, amidst the stone walls and industrious lives of the nuns, resides the estranged wife of King Lear who slowly unravels her story while she grieves the family she had already lost. Thus, Thorp’s Learwife begins where Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear concludes and provides the missing queen’s perspective through her memories and her grief.

Hamnet

Hamnet

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (2020) includes some of the most moving fictional explorations of courtship and childbirth, maternity and pandemic, grief and loss, that I have read of late. Ultimately, this novel grapples with the ways that parents can move on after the unthinkable happens and they lose a child to illness; a part of that story, O’Farrell’s novel argues, as literary critics before her have, is William Shakespeare’s penning of his famous tragedy Hamlet, an act that may provide healing for both himself and his relationship with Agnes.