Evaluation and Management of Vulvar Disease, an Issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics
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Vulvar disorders are prevalent but often overlooked conditions in the curricula of obstetrics and...
The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg
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'I think that, if required on pain of death to name instantly the most perfect thing in the...
The Last Black Unicorn
8.7
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From stand-up comedian, actress, and breakout star of Girls Trip, Tiffany Haddish, comes The Last...
On Photography
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Susan Sontag's On Photography is a seminal and groundbreaking work on the subject. Susan Sontag's...
Photography: History and Theory
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Photography: History and Theory introduces students to both the history of photography and critical...
Added Time: Surviving Cancer, Death Threats and the Premier League
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Television has taken us inside the Premier League, into the lives of its players and managers, as...
Always Managing: My Autobiography
8.0
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This is the Sunday Times no.1 bestselling memoir from Harry Redknapp. 'From kicking a ball as a kid...
Bald is Better with Earrings: A Survivor's Guide to Getting Through Breast Cancer
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The breast cancer guide every woman needs for herself, her best friend, and her sister-a warm,...
Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains
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That psychotherapy works is a basic assumption of anyone who sees a therapist. But why does it work?...
Hamnet is an imagining of what could have happened to Shakespeare’s son - even in the parish records it doesn’t say what his cause of death was. Maggie O’Farrell makes this version completely plausible though: plague should have been a real threat at this time. It killed indiscriminately: young and old, rich and poor, weak and strong. They were all vulnerable to illnesses with no cures. I’m something of an emotional reader at the best of times, but as Agnes, Hamnet’s mother, was preparing her son for burial, I was crying in to my breakfast. My 16 year old son looked at me over the top of his bacon butty and said:”Another sad bookthen, Mum?”, and shook his head. To read of a mother and her dead son, and see my 13 and 16 year old sons merrily tucking in to their bacon sandwiches, may not have been the ideal time to be reading this.
This is the kind of book that makes you really look at how precarious life was in those times, and how lucky we are today to have so few worries on this scale (Covid-19 aside!).
The writing is so beautiful, so descriptive and emotive: it picks you up and sets you down squarely in Elizabethan Stratford, making you feel exactly how Agnes must have felt. Honestly, it broke my heart to read of her pain.
If you haven’t read this yet, you’re in for a treat. This deserves ALL the awards.