Where to start with Maggie O'Farrell

British novelist, born 1972. Won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, the British Book Awards: Fiction Book of the Year in 2021 and the Costa Novel Award in 2010.

Best Maggie O'Farrell book to start with: Hamnet (2020), on 4 of the 13 lists it could have made.

Most readers now meet O’Farrell through Hamnet, and it is the right place to start. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020 and Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2021, and it was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. It is the story of the son Shakespeare lost, told chiefly from his wife’s point of view, and it is easy to get into.

The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2023. It is set in Renaissance Italy and follows a young duchess in the months after her wedding. It is a good second book if you liked the historical setting.

For something modern, This Must Be the Place, shortlisted for the Costa in 2016, moves around the world and through decades as it tells one man’s life. Instructions for a Heatwave, shortlisted for the Costa in 2013, is a family story set in the hot summer of 1976. The Hand That First Held Mine won the Costa in 2010 and weaves together two women’s stories from different decades, which makes it the one to choose if you like a puzzle.