Maggie O'Farrell

We are never closer to life than when we brush up against the possibility of death. O'Farrell discusses the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. From a childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive, through her ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.

"A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman--a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder...