Gosh I liked this book. Hamnet is a fictional account of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, who died at age 11 in 1596, most likely from the plague. The story has very little to do with the Shakespeare we know and much more to do with the women in his life: his mother, his wife, his two daughters, and his mother-in-law.

The first part of the story moves between two different times: Shakespeare falling in love with Agnes, an unsettling, free-spirited young woman who keeps a kestrel and wanders the woods. Shakespeare, through the ill-dealings of his father, is sent to tutor Agnes’ step brothers. He is intimidated by her strapping younger brother who acts as her protector from the village and the step-mother. But Agnes has her eye on Shakespeare and the pair devise a way to ensure they get married. The narrative shifts back and forth between this time of optimism and present day 1596 when Hamnet is struggling to help his twin Judith through a fever. She has suddenly fallen ill and nobody is around to help. The grandparents are out, his older sister is off running errands, and his mother is absent (Agnes is at the farm with her brother who has asked her to come manage her swarming bees). The two narratives crash together with Agnes coming home from the fields and discovering Hamnet fraught with worry and Judith on death’s door.

The second part of the novel moves us through the family’s despair at losing Hamnet. Shakespeare retreats to the playhouses of London and Agnes abandons the plan for her and the children to join him there. It’s impossible to hope that Judith will survive the dirt of London, and it’s impossible for Agnes to return to life as usual.

I liked that this book is very much about the women vs. Shakespeare himself. There is darkness, tension, and the intensity of living through plagues set in parallel to the herbology and wisdom of women, the bonding and bickering, plus the love and grief of the women in this novel.

If you like historical fiction, twist on familiar plots, or award-winning literary fiction, then this is for you.

It reminds me of James by Percival Everett in its retelling of a seemingly familiar story. It has the “don’t let the wool be pulled over your eyes,” draw of By Any Other Name of Jodi Picoult, the dark tension of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, and it has the brilliant writing of females characters like The Women by Kristin Hannah.

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult is a fictionalized account of Emilia Bassano’s life from age 13 to 76 (1582-1645). As a young girl, she is a ward of English aristocrats who school her on languages, history, and writing. But at age 13, Emilia is contracted to Lord Chamberlain as his mistress in exchange for her family’s long-term contract as the Queen’s musicians. Emilia is young, an Italian Jew, highly educated, and an aspiring playwright. It’s just not a place and time for women to flourish. Emilia has little say in her life; she is unable to write professionally, or to publish her plays and poetry. She is a dark beauty in contrast to the white, powdered faces fashionable in court. And, she has to hide her Judaism. The thesis of the story is that the Shakespeare we laud today was no playwright. He bought plays from those who wished to remain anonymous and published them in his name. It was a business proposition that suited both parties, but a mistake for modern-day fans to attribute so much praise to him.

The modern-day story interwoven with Emilia’s is that of Melina, a descendant who is also an aspiring playwright. Melina’s challenge is that of being a woman in a field still dominated by white men (playwrights, producers, funders, reviewers). Her attempt to get a play produced is marred by sexism and her own mistakes in how she presents herself.

By Any Other Name is a thought-provoking novel about attribution: false representation, ghostwriting, and allonyms (pen names).

Whether you read it as fiction only, or as an exploration of the mythology that has sprung up around Shakespeare (a man who managed to write 37 plays alone while simultaneously being a full-time actor and producer), Picoult weaves in a lot of doubt about the providence of Shakespeare’s work. Other playwrights and poets of the time reference each other and were lauded publicly at the time of their death or buried in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey. They left behind books and manuscripts in their wills. Yet Shakespeare left none. It was a time when writers collaborated and edited and finished each others’ works, whereas Shakespeare is said to have written alone. His plays humanize Jews, at a time when anti-Semitism was the norm. He never spent time in court, in the military, reading law, visiting Italy or Denmark, or playing music, or educating his daughters. Yet his plays and sonnets are ripe with details about music, courts, and law. His female characters are rich, spirited, and educated. Yet he did not educate his own daughters.

There are naysayers. And there are theories that multiple writers collaborated and published under the name Shakespeare. Regardless, novel or not, Picoult reminds us that women writing in Elizabethan times, doing science, crafting medicines, playing music and writing plays for home performances paved the way for women writers today. The main premise of By Any Other Name is that just because there is an absence of evidence (of women writers and playwrights) doesn’t mean there is evidence of absence.

If you like Jodi Picoult’s work (see Mad Honey), Kristin Hannah, or Kate Quinn then definitely give this a read.