Completist Author: Maggie O'Farrell

My Lover’s Lover

by Maggie O'Farrell

Things move quickly between Lily and Marcus after she slips and falls on a sidewalk in this 2002 contemporary novel. She moves in with him within a week, sleeping in the room that belonged to his girlfriend Sinead. Marcus insinuates Sinead is dead but her presence haunts the loft, reminiscent of du Maurier’s Rebecca, making Lily question truth, reality, and obsession.

Instructions for a Heatwave

by Maggie O'Farrell

This 2013 novel is set during the record-setting 1976 London heatwave during which the patriarch of an Irish family clears out his bank account and disappears, leaving his family to puzzle out where he went, and why. In the aftermath, the three adult children respond to their mother's plea for help and descend on their parents' home for the first time in ages. Soon the three are working (and squabbling) together as they try to determine what might have happened to their father. As the search progresses, secrets from the parents' marriage and the adult children's struggles and insecurities are revealed. The story takes us from London to Ireland and New York City as we wait to see what happened to the father, and what will happen next in each character's life. The audiobook is particularly lovely as voiced by John Lee, with his lilting Irish accent.

This Must Be the Place

by Maggie O'Farrell

This is one of my favorite rereads. Family stories are commonplace in fiction, but I love this one for its intricate plotting, nuanced characters, true-to-life feel, and ultimate hopefulness. This is the story of an unlikely but successful marriage between a floundering American professor and a British film star who hated the limelight so much she faked her own death and disappeared ... until an unexpected bit of news, twenty years old but newly discovered, threatens to unravel everything they've built together.

I Am, I Am, I Am

by Maggie O'Farrell

In O'Farrell's memoir-of-sorts, she tells the story of her life through seventeen brushes with death. I didn't quite believe the premise when I first heard it (Seventeen brushes? Really?), but O'Farrell doesn't mess around with this heart-pounding collection, in which she recounts near-misses with car accidents, murderers, anaphylaxis, a childhood bout with encephalitis, and more. There's obviously some sensitive content here, but I'd like to especially point out that O'Farrell's heart-rending essay on miscarriage is some of the finest writing I've seen on the subject (a subject that's not covered enough in literature).

Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

In this 2020 award-winning historical novel, Maggie O’Farrell takes a few historically known facts about Shakespeare’s wife and family and, from this spare skeleton, builds out a lush, vivid world. You should know this book is devastating, and I consumed the better part of a box of Kleenex while reading it. Yet with its captivating central character and evocative storytelling, I didn’t want to leave Shakespeare’s world—or put down O’Farrell’s writing. The story centers on Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, who is torn apart by grief when their son Hamnet dies at age 11. Soon after, Shakespeare writes Hamlet—and O’Farrell convincingly posits that the two events are closely tied. In her distinctive style, O’Farrell takes you to the heart of what really matters in life, making you feel such a deep sense of loss for Hamnet that you won’t look at your own life the same way.

After You’d Gone

by Maggie O'Farrell

This was another book where I read the final paragraph and turned back to the beginning to read it again. I'm working my way through Maggie O'Farrell's backlist, and this, her 2000 debut, may be my favorite of her older works. Told from multiple points of view, in multiple timelines, it took me a few chapters to find my footing, but once I did I blew through this compelling mix of love story, mystery, and compelling family saga. You should know that terrible, seemingly random tragedies beset characters in O'Farrell's novels, yet in her plots these surprising turns don't feel cheap, but all too true to our own real life experiences. (As one character muses, "Why isn't life better designed so it warns you when terrible things are about to happen?")

The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox

by Maggie O'Farrell

This 2006 family saga unfolds through three perspectives: Iris, her grandmother Kitty, and her great-aunt Esme. Iris’s everyday life at her vintage clothing shop is upended when she receives a phone call from Cauldstone Hospital, a psychiatric facility, saying her great-aunt Esme is being released after sixty years of institutionalization. This is unexpected, to say the least: Iris’s grandmother always said she’d been an only child. Kitty has Alzheimer’s so Iris can’t ask her about what happened. Her only recourse is to get to know Esme and learn whatever she might share. What follows is a story about the way women and girls were controlled and harmed by institutionalization, family secrets, and dangerous truths.

The Marriage Portrait

by Maggie O'Farrell

In 1560 15-year-old Lucretia left Florence to marry Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later she’d be dead and the rumor is her husband murdered her. For her 2022 historical novel, Maggie O’Farrell took inspiration from Robert Browning’s poem My Last Duchess, widely believed to have been inspired by Alfonso. His Duchess Lucretia di Cosimo de’ Medici d’Este served as the inspiration for this puzzle of a historical novel. As Lucretia sits to have her portrait painted, it’s clear she’s in trouble. She’s unable to give her husband an heir, for reasons that aren’t her fault. People begin telling her she needs to have a plan and that she doesn’t know what her husband is capable of. Brilliantly written, O’Farrell paints gorgeous scenes in this portrait of what happens inside a fraught marriage.

Completist Author: Maggie O'Farrell

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