Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

Susanna, shortly before her second birthday, sits in a basket on the floor of her grandmother’s parlour, her legs crossed, her skirts billowing up around her, filled with air. She holds a wooden spoon in each hand and with these she paddles as fast as she can. She is sculling down the river. The current is fast and weaving. Weeds waft and unravel. She has to paddle and paddle to stay afloat—if she stops, who knows what may happen?

This passage and one following it are some of the first pages I ever wrote of the novel. They are interlinked, describing the same incident, as seen from Susanna’s point of view, and then Mary’s. I had written thirty or so pages of ‘Hamnet’ in 2015 or so, then swerved away from the project to work on something else. When I decided to give the book another go, in 2017, I read over those pages and ditched the lot, except for these. So I have a strange fondness for them as they feel like the book’s archeology to me, its bedrock. I loved writing about a complex adult situation from an uncomprehending child’s viewpoint: it gives it an extra potency, I believe.