Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

He didn’t know why but something about him had always drawn his father’s anger and frustration to him, like a horseshoe to a magnet.

She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married. She grows up, too, with the memory of what it meant to be properly loved, for what you are, not what you ought to be.

There is, she has found, great power to be had in silence.

The words exist, if you know how to listen.

The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children’s hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never for a moment forget they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown.

He needs to find his mother: amazing how strong this instinct is, even now, as a great lad of eleven. He recalls this sensation, this urge—just—from when he was much younger: the driving need to be with his mother, to be under her gaze, to be by her side, close enough to be able to reach out and touch her, because no one else would do.

he sees that the pair have led a life together that began before anything else.