Maggie O’Farrell: Contemporary Critical Perspectives

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.

Elaine Canning is a writer, editor and public engagement specialist living in Swansea, South Wales, UK. Originally from Belfast, she holds an MA and PhD in Hispanic Studies from Queen’s University, Belfast, and an MA in Creative Writing from Swansea University. She is currently Head of Special Projects at Swansea University, which include the Rhys Davies National Short Story Competition and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. She has authored a monograph and papers on Spanish Golden-Age drama and her short stories have appeared in Nation.Cymru and The Lonely Crowd. Editor of Take a Bite: The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology (2021), New World, New Beginnings: Resilience and Connectivity through Poetry (2021), and Cree: The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology (2022), she is also the author of a debut novel, The Sandstone City (2022) and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.