WIR: Hamnet and O Caledonia
It's a minor truism of my earlier days blogging about murder ballads that "death is a good plot device." Today's post links up two titles published a little shy of 30 years apart, but connected in a number of ways--including being up front that they involve the death of a young person. Trust me, this info is not a spoiler in either case. It also happens that I picked both of them up based on the recommendations of Baltimore booksellers, both located within reasonable walking distance of Charm City's Inner Harbor. Both books were among my top dozen fiction reads of 2024. (Sorry, I'm a little late to press, I know--I have a significant backlog I'm trying to address...)
Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
With the recent movie adaptation of Hamnet and the stage adaptation (one currently up at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater), any detailed review I might offer here feels superfluous. I did find a few things about it, though, that might elude the attention of the standard review. I read the book in December of 2024.
As readers and viewers know, Hamnet tells a love story of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, and the death story of their eleven year old son, Hamnet, who falls victim to the plague. O'Farrell provides this news in the front matter of the book, before the narrative even starts. Again, it is no spoiler. For what it's worth, William Shakespeare is never actually named in the book.
Hamnet was my introduction to O'Farrell's fiction, and I feel compelled at the outset to note that I've rarely, if ever, encountered a prose style so gripping. My best way of explaining it is that I feel that the story clung to me as I was reading it. It conveyed a sense of urgency stylistically that made it difficult to put down, but yet avoided inducing a full-on claustrophobia. (Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall created that kind of reaction for me.)
For me to go too deeply into the Shakespeares' love story likely would involve spoilers, so I'll avoid that as best I can. What I did find most marvelously depicted in their relationship was an intersection of two kinds of literacies. This is, perhaps, where my own particular interests focus differently than others' might, but I think the story has value in showing how people develop skills to navigate the world with the tools the world affords them.
One would be hard-pressed, I believe, to identify a figure more significantly accomplished in reading and writing literacy than William Shakespeare. We can, I think, put fully aside for the present purposes whether Shakespeare really was "Shakespeare," and consider Farrell's character as a literary figure operating at the pinnacle of writing in his age. As a woman of 16th century England, Agnes was not afforded access to the same set of "tools" (reading and writing), which would have come from schooling only afforded to boys, at least within her class and setting. The Agnes we meet in Hamnet, however, has deep understandings of the natural world and of healing arts.
I think this interplay among the characters, as they navigate their lives with each other and the depths of their grief over their son, will "preach," as they say. It's a helpful example of understanding human talents more diversely and broadly, and not supposing intelligence or capability only on one continuum. This theme is further beautifully advanced in a scene where Agnes seeks her brother Bartholemew's help in understanding how to help her husband free himself from a miserable existence working in his father's glove-making shop. Bartholomew understands the value of "proper work," and what constitutes "proper" work is different for people of different strengths.
"He needs work to steady him, to give him purpose. He can't go on this way, an errand-boy for his father, tutoring here and there. A head like his, he'll run mad." (p. 160)
May we all find our "proper work" to steady us and give us purpose.
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
O Caledonia is a revelation. Believe the hype printed on the cover. The quote from Ali Smith declares it "one of the best least-known novels of the twentieth century." It is Elspeth Barker's only novel, and I have no notes, and no quibble with Smith--although I'm eager for it to become better-known.
As with Hamnet, Barker's novel discloses the death, indeed the murder, of its young protagonist in the opening few pages. What happens on the way to returning to the scene of the crime by the end of the book is magical, both in terms of Barker's prose and the remarkable character Barker creates.
I'll let an excerpt of Maggie O'Farrell's introduction to the book speak to the quality of the prose:
"O Caledonia is one of those books you proselytise about; you want to beckon others aboard its glorious train. I have bought numerous copies as presents, pressing them into people's hands with an exhortation to read without delay. I once decided to become friends with someone on the sole basis that she named O Caledonia as her favourite book; I'm happy to report that it was a decision I've never had cause to regret. When I taught creative writing, I would read aloud the opening chapters to my students and I would constantly break off to say, 'Are you hearing this? Do you see how good that image/word choice/sentence construction is? Do you?" (p. x, British spellings and emphasis in original)
I have no argument with O'Farrell's assessment here. The book is a masterpiece of prose style (it's Scottish!, after all...), in its 188 page span.
Distinct from this stylistic treat, however, is that Barker generously gives us the opportunity to spend time with the book's protagonist, Janet--perhaps one of the top 5 characters I've encountered in all of fiction. (This is undoubtedly an unreliable rating, but is at least good for the books I've read in the past three years or so...) Her death is awful, no lie. Her life with a family and others that don't understand her is challenging. Her existence, fictional though it may be, is glorious. The book's epigraph provides the tie between Janet and its title--Sir Walter Scott's couplet about Scotland, "O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child!".
As with Hamnet, I'm inclined to reflect on this aspect of the novel in light of some common tropes and challenges about literacy--particularly with regard to getting students to read the whole book. In a world where some school-based reading strategies seem to over-emphasize various skill-based elements, such as allusion or foreshadowing, symbolism or irony, books like O Caledonia are a reminder of what a treasure it is just to spend time in the virtual presence of a character.
Now, per O'Farrell's style-based praise above, it's clear that Barker's work presents many of those techniques to analyze. I would place the Janet character, however, in the realm of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre or Barbara Kingsolver's Damon Fields (in Demon Copperhead) where the value to the reader is distinctively tied to a virtual companionship with the protagonist. (Kingsolver's Fields obviously owes some heritage to Dickens.) This may indeed be highly idiosyncratic to the individual reader, and there may be a number of reasons that O Caledonia or Demon Copperhead will never find their ways into a school classroom, but these works are reminders to me that novels present virtues never fully digestible into "skills" or even easy summary.
AWIGI: Charm City, hon! -- Charm City Books and Greedy Reads
Baltimore is almost as difficult for me to pick bookshops from as Chicago is. I'm a fan of The Ivy, Atomic Books, Snug Books, Red Emma's, and a few others, but am focusing today on Charm City Books and Greedy Reads - Fells Point. This is almost entirely because they introduced me to the books discussed above, but also has the advantage of lifting up two shops reasonably close to Baltimore's Inner Harbor and tourist/convention districts.
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| Yours truly and son, outside Charm City Books, August 2024 |
Charm City Books
I have Charm City Books's Daven Ralston to thank for introducing me to Hamnet. I visited there with my son in August 2024, during a baseball-focused trip to Baltimore. (Although I've lived in Chicago most of my life, my baseball allegiances were forged in Maryland.) A family-owned shop, Charm City Books is located about a 20-minute walk due north from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. It's just a little bit north of the newly revitalized Lexington Market and only a 3 or 4 blocks from the Walters Art Museum.
When we entered, we were greeted by Daven, and her little dog, too. At some point I'll have to hashtag stores with pets, particularly for those folks with allergies. I'm not very reactive to dogs, but I am pretty reactive to cats--so I try to be disciplined in my assessments of the shops, without letting my histamine responses unduly tilt the table.
Charm City Books clearly does a lot with a little space, including a vibrant kids' section within a relatively small footprint. Daven's presence in the shop was terrifically friendly, and made going with the bookseller's recommendation all the easier.
Just to hang in there with the baseball theme, my continued following of CCB's social presence makes it clear that it is doing an all-star job of playing its position as a progressive (in Josh Cook's typology) community book store. It's supporting community book drives, advancing school and community engagement initiatives, increasing book access for furloughed government workers, and positioning itself as welcoming and accessible for people to walk right in and be charmed. It's curating with diversity of content and readership in mind. Their event game is strong, and it's clear that it balances both adult and kid-based audiences.
CCB is a store for readers, and a welcoming point of entry for the book-curious of all ages.
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| Although I was actually just trying to use the palm activation on my cell phone camera, this also works for confessing my greedy reading. |
Greedy Reads - Fells Point
Greedy Reads holds down a friendly, daytime corner in the bar- and restaurant-dense Fells Point neighborhood in Baltimore. It is a happily short distance down Aliceanna Street from the Blue Moon Café, home of the "Sweet Baby Jesus" crabmeat and egg dish. Although I didn't get to GR-FP on that August baseball trip, I returned to Baltimore about a month later for that year's ProLiteracy Conference a little further west down Aliceanna from the shop.
One of two Greedy Reads shops, the Fells Point location maximizes its small footprint, as far as shelf curation and maximizing the number of quality reads within a space. I visited the Greedy Reads - Remington location in 2025 to compare. Although the curation is equally good (unsurprisingly), I prefer the Fells Point spot. It's a little ironic, I suppose, that the Remington location is closer to more residential neighborhoods further north in Baltimore, it feels less walkable to reach. And, while the available space is larger, the shop feels a little colder--with a more warehouse-like feel.
I think I have a Greedy Reads "Shelf Talker" sign to thank for connecting me to O Caledonia, although the word "Caledonia" in the title would have caught my eye, and I likely was completely suckered by Ali Smith's cover blurb. That said, my stop involved a great chat with the bookseller there, including discussing a few ways GR was plugged into the indie bookshop movement. My memory has faded too much over time to have confidence that the person I spoke to then is still on the staff list now.
Although the Fells Point location is too small and densely packed with books for much in the way of on-site events, it's clear that both GR stores (also progressive, in the Josh Cook sense) have a commitment to community impact--promoting donations to a variety of community-serving causes. I think the Fells Point location had a small kids' section, but I rarely focus on that area.
I do have the clear memory, though, that Greedy Reads - Fells Point is likely in the top 10-20% of serendipity per square foot. It's a store for readers, and stands a strong chance of introducing you to the book you didn't know you needed.
