Why it is worth reading Maggie O'Farrell beyond 'Hamnet'

BadalonaFans of Maggie O’Farrell have received the good news that at the beginning of the year –specifically, the first day of February– we will have a new novel by the Irish author: The Marriage Portrait. It has been translated into Catalan by Marc Rubió and will be published by L’Altra Editorial. It is a story set at the end of the 19th century, in an Irish corner far from everything, and inspired by the adventure experienced by the author’s great-grandfather, who worked mapping the island for the British army. Editors and critics speak of an overwhelming and moving narrative, and many claim that it is her best work.

Regarding this, I remembered that often, when in reading clubs they ask me for recommendations and I speak to them, inevitably, about Maggie O’Farrell, I find that many readers react immediately by citing Hamnet, but acknowledge that they have not read anything else by the author, which they were enthusiastic about. Many people arrived at Maggie O’Farrell after having seen the film adaptation of Hamnet.

And it happens that I regret that the impressive success of Hamnet has ended up overshadowing the fabulous earlier work of Maggie O’Farrell. Some readers also read the immediately following novel, The Marriage Portrait, set in 16th-century Italy regarding the life of Lucrezia de' Medici. These are magnificent works, as The Marriage Portrait surely will be too. It seems clear that Maggie O’Farrell feels comfortable drawing inspiration from historical episodes and recreating ancient worlds.

But I regret that the novels preceding Hamnet go unnoticed, because they are true gems. Since her debut After You’d Gone (recently recovered), O’Farrell wrote and published wonderful, unique, and seductive stories such as The Hand That First Held Mine, Instructions for a Heatwave [Instructions for a Heatwave] –published by Salamandra in Spanish–, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox or This Must Be the Place, which is, perhaps, my favorite. Like a net full of knots—each knot a trauma, a misstep, a misunderstanding, a mistake—this novel captures you and, once it has you, makes you love characters who, from knot to knot, manage to weave delicate and powerful bonds, like the bonds sustained by love.

Also highly recommended is the very original book published in 2019 in Catalan: I Am, I Am, I Am, where she recounts the seventeen times the author has felt death as a certain and near threat. It is a collection of apparently calm situations that can become very complicated and that make you think, inevitably, of the superb title of another great writer, Carmen Martín Gaite, and her Lo raro es vivir (Anagrama, 1996).