Maggie O’Farrell is a British author renowned for her powerful storytelling and emotional depth. The first book of hers I read was The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which my son had studied at school. I was deeply moved by it and still feel the emotions it evoked. In 2020, O’Farrell won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for Hamnet, a novel about Shakespeare’s family. I read it this year while making my way through Ulysses, drawn to Hamnet through Hamlet, and found myself equally enchanted by the writing. So I will read them all.
Books read
Novels
After You’d Gone (2000)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006)
Instructions for a Heatwave (2013)
Hamnet (2020)
Memoirs
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death (2017)
Children’s books
The Boy Who Lost His Spark (2022)
When the Stammer Came to Stay (2024)
Books to read
Novels
After You’d Gone (2000)
My Lover’s Lover (2002)
The Distance Between Us (2004)
The Hand That First Held Mine (2010)
This Must Be the Place (2016)
The Marriage Portrait (2022)
Children’s books
Where Snow Angels Go (2020)