A deep dive into the works of author Maggie O'Farrell and a discussion about our favorite completist authors.
Today I’m delighted to kick off a new series we’ve been cooking up here at MMD HQ for a long time: beginning today, my team and I are excited to discuss our “completist authors,” those for whom we’ve read their entire body of work.
In tomorrow’s podcast episode, you’ll hear me say this series has been in the works since last summer. But when I actually checked my team meeting notes, I can see I’ve been pondering this idea for much longer, and that initially today’s post was slated to run on February 12, 2025. But, thanks to my overfull schedule and a bit of bookish serendipity, I’m happy to be kicking things off today, nearly a full year later. I hope you find it to be worth the wait.
I trust I don’t need to explain the “overfull” bit about the delay, but what about that bit of bookish serendipity? I’m glad you asked.
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When it came time to choose my own completist author—from among the many authors whose works I’ve read in full—it wasn’t hard to decide. I historically struggle with superlatives, but over the years a clear favorite has emerged for me, and that is Maggie O’Farrell. I first read her in 2017, beginning with her seventh novel This Must Be the Place. It was love at first read. After finishing that book, I read it again, then began reading her backlist, then prioritized her new books as they came out.
In 2021 I decided I needed to read her entire catalog, and now in my library at home I have a shelf full of banged-up, marked-up, dog-eared copies to prove it. I’m a completist for numerous authors, but only one has earned such a shelf thus far.
Meanwhile: just days before I was set to finally publish this post in January, I received a publicist pitch in my inbox. This is nothing new, we get maybe a dozen every day for Modern Mrs Darcy and What Should I Read Next. But this one was something special, as the publicist, on behalf of Maggie and Focus Features, wanted to know if I might be interested in speaking with the author about co-writing the new screen adaptation of her 2020 novel Hamnet.
That conversation airs tomorrow on What Should I Read Next; we finessed our editorial calendar so this post runs as its companion. I hope you’ll listen, as the two formats are meant to work in tandem: in the episode, I share more in my own voice about my history with Maggie O’Farrell’s work, our typical process for selecting guests—particularly our rarer professional guests—for What Should I Read Next?, what author conversations bring to my reading life, and why I didn’t hesitate before giving an enthusiastic and instant yes to Maggie’s people to speak with her about anything at all. In today’s post, I’m going into detail on individual titles in a way I don’t on the podcast.
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In this new completist series, our team members are taking turns sharing our completist authors, and what it is that keeps drawing us back to that particular author’s books. What do we love about their style, their stories? What have we learned in our completist journey—about the work, yes, but also about ourselves? To qualify for our series, the author must have written at least six books; each team member will highlight a half dozen or so titles of note from that body of work.
I’ve read all of Maggie O’Farrell’s adult works. (Some will consider this caveat crucial, others will think it unnecessary, but: I haven’t read her children’s stories.) Just days before her publisher reached out, I’d completed Land, her new novel coming out on June 2. (We touch on it oh-so-briefly in our conversation; I cannot wait to tell you more about it when the time is right!)
As I mentioned above, my point of entry was her 2016 novel This Must Be the Place. I wish I remembered why I first picked it up, but I do remember finishing it in the wee hours of the morning in Davidson, North Carolina in October of 2017. I named it a favorite book of 2017, and then again as a favorite re-read in multiple subsequent years. It remains the Maggie O’Farrell novel I’ve spent the most time with.
As you can imagine, when I read that work, I found its way of looking at the world incredibly compelling, and the storytelling package it was wrapped in supremely satisfying. My journey with O’Farrell’s body of work—both the books I love most and those that haven’t worked as well—has helped me articulate what it is, exactly, that so speaks to me.
I love realistic, literary or literary-leaning, emotionally resonant novels. I especially love a tone that’s wistful, reflective, and wise. My catnip is books that quietly invite the reader to look at how life is, or how life could be. They make me think, yes, this is true, this is real, this is exactly how it is. And they gently compel me to reflect on what these truths mean for my own life.
If you’ve been around here for a minute, you know I also adore a complicated family saga, and it just so happens that Maggie O’Farrell’s go-to is families in tricky situations, or, if not families, women in tricky relationships and complicated family situations.)
This Must Be the Place was my way in, and then I read it again. Next I read Instructions for a Heatwave, then her by-then-new memoir I Am, I Am, I Am. I believe my next stop was Hamnet. Then I embarked on my backlist project, going back to her debut After You’d Gone and working my way forward from there, pausing to read The Marriage Portrait when I got my copy.
While her style has evolved over time, the constants that keep bringing me back are stylish (but but not overwrought) prose, interconnected, layered stories, intricate plotting, and evocative details. Her work consistently feels lush and richly textured in a way that this reader finds incredibly satisfying.
I hope you enjoy our completist series to come, and reading about my own completist journey today. Want to know where to start with Maggie O’Farrell? The eight novels below have been touchstones on my own path, and might just be your way in to meeting—or experiencing more of—one of my favorite authors?
Readers, you know I want to hear about your experience—past, present, and possible future—in comments.
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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. I read this ages ago and still think about these characters often; the audiobook is particularly lovely as voiced by John Lee, with his lilting Irish accent. More info →
This 2016 literary fiction consists of interlocking scenes from numerous points of view, taking place between 1944 and the next seventy years. It’s one of my 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. The novel focuses on the unlikely but successful marriage between a floundering American linguistics professor and a British film star who hated the limelight so much she faked her own death and disappeared. Successful, that is, until an unexpected bit of news, twenty years old but newly discovered via a radio broadcast, threatens to unravel everything they've built together. More info →
In O'Farrell's 2018 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 sensitive content in this collection, but her heart-rending essay on miscarriage merits special mention: it's some of the finest writing I've seen on the subject. Those new to O'Farrell could easily begin with this collection, but readers of her novels may draw special pleasure from finding in these pages the real-life experiences that clearly informed so many of her characters. More info →
This sophomore novel, published in 2002, is my least favorite and—while these things don’t necessarily correlate—her lowest rated on Goodreads, at just 3.28. And yet! Flipping through my dog-eared, marked-up copy, deciding what to tell you about it, makes me want to re-read it immediately. It’s a love story with a hint of ghost story: Lily and Marcus meet when she falls on the sidewalk and he comes to her rescue. Lily moves in with Marcus before the week is over, sleeping in the room that not long ago belonged to his girlfriend Sinead. Marcus insinuates Sinead is dead but her presence haunts the loft, prompting an obsessed Lily to question what is real and doggedly dig for the truth. This work lacks the maturity of my favorite O’Farrell novels, but oh, what a delight to spy the same elements I love, even in this early work: questions of love and chance and causality, characters struggling with fear and self-sabotage, unspoken sentiments and family secrets. I also loved the little cameo from John of After She’d Gone. More info →
In this 2020 award-winning historical novel, O’Farrell takes a few known facts about Shakespeare’s wife and family and, from this spare skeleton, builds out a lush, vivid world. This book is devastating (I know I'm not alone in consuming the better part of a box of Kleenex while reading it). Yet with O'Farrell's sympathetic central character and evocative storytelling, you won't want to leave Shakespeare’s world. The story centers on Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, who is torn apart by grief when their son Hamnet dies from the Black Death plague 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. More info →
O'Farrell’s 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 family saga. You should know that terrible, seemingly random tragedies beset characters in O'Farrell's novels, yet these surprising turns don't feel cheap in her plots, 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 story opens with London-dwelling Alice stepping off a train in Scotland to visit her family, but while still in the station she witnesses something so shocking it upends her understanding of her entire life, and she immediately boards a return train to London. Through the course of the novel, we go back and forth in time to understand just what unfolded that day in the station, and we also watch Alice's great love story with a journalist named John unfold. When this novel was first published, critics marveled that this sophisticated story was the work of a debut novelist; I challenge you to read it today and not feel the same. More info →
O'Farrell's fourth novel, published in 2006, is a family saga 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, and Iris is listed as her emergency contact. This is unexpected, to say the least: Iris’s grandmother always said she’d been an only child. Iris's mother has likewise never heard of Esme. Grandmother 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, all the while wondering why Esme's very existence has been carefully kept secret her entire life. Esme's reappearance turns Iris's understanding of her family—and to a larger extent, all of society—on its head, as the truth of her great-aunt's past is slowly revealed. The truths revealed in this book are difficult and bracing, but O'Farrell's tone manages to be at once urgent, tender, and wise. More info →
For her 2022 historical novel, O’Farrell drew inspiration from Robert Browning’s poem My Last Duchess, widely believed to have been inspired by Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara. In 1560, a fifteen-year-old girl left Florence to marry Alfonso, becoming Duchess Lucretia di Cosimo de’ Medici d’Este. Less than a year later she’d be dead; there were rumors she was murdered by her husband. This tragic story inspired this puzzle of a novel. Early in the story, 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—but that doesn't mean the violent Alfonso won't take his anger out on her. She doesn't know what her husband is capable of, those close to the Duchess tell her, and urge her to develop an escape plan. O’Farrell's eye for detail shines in this taut and brilliantly written portrait of what unfolds inside a fraught marriage. My experience with this novel taught me much about myself as a reader: I can see it is brilliantly executed, absolutely gorgeous on a sentence level. It's thrilling, and so very smart, but lacks the emotional resonance that my personal favorites share. More info →
Who are your completist authors? Have you read any of Maggie O’Farrell’s works? Please share in the comments.
P.S. A trick for when you’re in a reading rut and Literary fiction for beginners.
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