She regards the face of her son, or the face that used to belong to her son, the vessel that held his mind, produced his speech, contained all that his eyes saw. The lips are dry, sealed. She would like to dampen them, to allow them a little water. The cheeks are stretched, hollowed by fever. The eyelids are a delicate purplish-grey, like petals of early spring flowers. She closed them herself. With her own hands, her own fingers, and how hot and slippery her fingers had felt, how unmanageable the task, how difficult it had been to put her fingers - trembling and wet - over those lids, so dear, so known, she could draw them from memory if someone were to put a stick of charcoal in her hand. How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there, in the eye sockets, to hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be.

One of my most anticipated books of the year, Hamnet did not disappoint. It tore through my heart like it was made of tissue paper. In spite of it being marketed as a story about William Shakespeare, I didn’t feel like it was really about him. He’s never named; you know he’s a playwright but he’s always referred to as the son, the father, the Latin tutor - he’s never Shakespeare or William, and for me, that gave the centre stage (no pun intended) to the very human themes of this book. Love and grief intermingle as we jump from present to past, watching William and Agnes fall in love with one another and becoming parents, to the worst day of their lives when they lose their young son.

O’Farrell permits her readers to grieve alongside her characters and she also allows us to share in their joys, their loves and quarrels, and, of course, their pain. Hamnet is, ultimately, a beautiful novel about family, and how loss transforms people, how it complicates and bruises things.

I loved this book and it definitely won’t be my last Maggie O’Farrell.