Inklings Book ClubPaul Mescal and Jessie Buckley: Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Dec 9, 2025 · 16 min
As soon as I started a book club, I knew we’d have to read Hamnet at some point. Hamnet is a fictional imagination of the life of Anne Hathaway -- here called Agnes because that’s what her family called her -- as well as her children. It’s about the family of William Shakespeare, but in the book he is never called by name. Instead, the spotlight is shifted to his family who are so often a mere foo…