WRITER

Maggie O'Farrell

1972 - Today

Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O'Farrell, RSL (born 27 May 1972), is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Maggie O'Farrell has received more than 701,915 page views. Her biography is available in 17 different languages on Wikipedia. Maggie O'Farrell is the 6,752nd most popular writer, the 6,226th most popular biography from United Kingdom and the 700th most popular British Writer.

Memorability Metrics

700k
Page Views (PV)
38.42
Historical Popularity Index (HPI)
17
Languages Editions (L)
2.98
Effective Languages (L*)
2.55
Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

I am, I am, I am

Irish Novelists, Biography, New York Times reviewed

An extraordinarily intimate memoir of the near death experiences that have made Maggie O'Farrell the woman and the writer she is today. A childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital. This is a memoir with a difference: seventeen encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal to us a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. It is a book to make you question yourself: what would you do if your life was in danger? How would you react? And what would you stand to lose?

2017

Hamnet

Fiction, historical, general, Fiction, biographical, Shakespeare, william, 1564-1616, fiction

2020

Hamnet

English literature, Fiction, historical, Fiction, biographical

2020

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Family secrets, Fiction, Sisters

In Edinburgh in the 1930s, the Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done. Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history?

2006

After you'd gone

Suicidal behavior, Fiction, Patients

Alice Raikes takes a train from London to Scotland to visit her family, but when she gets there she witnesses something so shocking that she insists on returning to London immediately. A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice's family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended. A riveting story that skips through time and interweaves multiple points of view, After You'd Gone is a novel of stunning psychological depth and marks the debut of a major literary talent.

2000

The Marriage Portrait

nyt:hardcover-fiction=2022-09-25, New York Times bestseller, Fiction

2022