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Bringing together cultural analysis and textual readings on critically-acclaimed bestseller and winner of the prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction, Maggie O'Farrell, this collection covers her nine novels, her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, two children's books and features an exclusive interview with the author herself. The first full-length study of O'Farrell's work, this book offers critical explorations from her earliest works to the award-winning Hamnet and most recent best-selling novel, The Marriage Portrait. With a timeline of her life and works, as well as suggested further reading, the themes explored include grief and sacrifice, longing and belonging, trauma, translation, palimpsestic texts and the relation of her work to history and the female domestic gothic.
"Critically-acclaimed Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction, Maggie O'Farrell is one of the most successful British-Irish authors writing today. Covering her nine novels, her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, and two children's books, Maggie O'Farrell: Contemporary Critical Perspectives is the first full-length study of O'Farrell's work, offering critical explorations from her earliest works to the award-winning Hamnet and most recent best-selling novel, The Marriage Portrait. Exploring themes such as grief and sacrifice, longing and belonging, trauma, translation, palimpsestic texts and the relation of her work to history and the female domestic gothic, this book also features a new and exclusive interview with O'Farrell herself, a timeline of her life and works, and suggested further reading"--
A top-ten bestseller 2016, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE by Maggie O'Farrell crosses time zones and continents to reveal an extraordinary portrait of a marriage. 'A complex, riveting novel of love and hope that grips at the heart' The Sunday Times A reclusive ex-film star living in the wilds of Ireland, Claudette Wells is a woman whose first instinct, when a stranger approaches her home, is to reach for her shotgun. Why is she so fiercely protective of her family, and what made her walk out of her cinematic career when she had the whole world at her feet? Her husband Daniel, reeling from a discovery about a woman he last saw twenty years ago, is about to make an exit of his own. It is a journey that will send him off-course, far away from the life he and Claudette have made together. Will their love for one another be enough to bring Daniel back home?
The Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling memoir from the author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT AS FEATURED ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS, BIG SCOTTISH BOOK CLUB AND THE ZOE BALL BOOKCLUB, A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, OBSERVER, RED and THE TELEGRAPH. *SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE FOR MEMOIR AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY 2018* I AM, I AM, I AM is a memoir with a difference - the unputdownable story of an extraordinary woman's life in near-death experiences. Insightful, inspirational, gorgeously written, it is a book to be read at a sitting, a story you finish newly conscious of life's fragility, determined to make every heartbeat count. A childhood illness sh...
*As featured on BBC Radio 4's 'A Good Read'* Winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award and a Sunday Times bestseller, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE by Maggie O'Farrell is a gorgeously written story of love and motherhood from the author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT. When the sophisticated Innes Kent turns up on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina struggles to reconcile the demands of motherhood with her sense of herself as an artist, and Ted is disturbed by memories of his own childhood that don't tally with his parents' version of events. As Ted begins to search for answers, an extraordinary portrait of two women is revealed, separated by fifty years, but connected in ways that neither could ever have expected.
'She's like no one I've ever met... She's like fire and water all at once.' Warwickshire, 1582. Agnes Hathaway, a natural healer, meets the Latin tutor, William Shakespeare. Drawn together by powerful but hidden impulses, they create a life together and make a family. As William moves to London to discover his place in the world of theatre, Agnes stays at home to raise their three children but she is the constant presence and purpose of his life. When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born. This new play based on Maggie O'Farrell's best-selling novel and adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet, Hymn), pulls back a curtain on the imagined family life of the greatest writer in the English language. Hamnet is a love letter to passion, birth, grief and the magic of nature. This updated and revised edition was published to coincide with the West End transfer of the original RSC production in October 2023.
This free digital collection brings together extracts from Sunday Times bestseller and Costa Novel Award-winner Maggie O'Farrell's six novels. Whether you're discovering Maggie O'Farrell for the first time or revisiting your favourite novels, this collection showcases the work of one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful writers at work today. Follow #DiscoverMaggie to find out more. Special bonus material: find out what inspired Maggie to write her haunting debut, After You'd Gone, and the bestselling Instructions for a Heatwave.
The stunning, groundbreaking debut novel of wrenching love and grief from the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait and National Book Circle Award Winner Hamnet Alice Raikes takes a train from London to Scotland to visit her family, but when she gets there she witnesses something so shocking that she insists on returning to London immediately. A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice's family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended. A riveting story that skips through time and interweaves multiple points of view, After You'd Gone is a novel of stunning psychological depth, marking the debut of a major literary talent.
From the Costa Award winning, bestselling author of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and I AM, I AM, I AM, comes an intense, breathtakingly accomplished story of a woman's life stolen, and reclaimed. 'Unputdownable' Ali Smith Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done. Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox and the one person who should know more, her grandmother Kitty, seems unable to answer Iris's questions. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history?
Winner of the 2004 Somerset Maugham Award: Gripping, insightful, and deft—a haunting story about the ways our families shape our lives, from the award-winning author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait. On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Year revellers, Jake realises that things are becoming dangerous. They know nothing of one another's existence, but both Stella and Jake flee their lives: Jake in search of a place so remote it doesn't appear on any map, and Stella for a destination in Scotland, the significance of which only her sister, Nina, will understand.