Living in brutal subsistence poverty, the folk shared dwellings with their livestock, whose butter and milk paid the rent, and walked barefoot in frigid mud to save their shoes.
They knew the Good People, the fairy folk, who must be appeased, staved off, and feared. They knew people who had been swept, taken by the Good People. The Good People, called thus so as not to offend them.
Set in 1826, in a small Irish village removed from the encroaching modern world, the people are steeped in their shared belief in herbal cures and potions, blessings and magical rituals.
Nora's daughter had married and gave birth to a son, a fair, normal child. Then her daughter became ill and was swept by The Good People; afterward, the grandchild became ill. A paralytic, shriveled, insensible child is left in Nora's care. When Nora's husband suddenly dies, the child becomes a burden, screaming and incontinent, unable to show love, but with insatiable need.
The doctor and priest tell Nora she must care for the cretin but offer no aid or consolation. She hires an impoverished girl, Mary, to care for the child. And asks for the help of aged Nance, a woman schooled in the ways of The Good People, an herbal healer.
Nora and Nance agree that the child is a changeling, and try charms to make the Good People reclaim their own and return Nora's true grandchild. Only Mary feels compassion for the child.
Under pressure from the priest to give up her heathen practice, Nance believes she needs to prove her skill and value; she needs a win. Nora is desperate for respite and, turning the child into an 'it', agrees to more desperate means, threatening harm to the boy in hope of forcing the Good People to take him back.
A dark and relentless book of a people crushed by poverty, clinging to inherited ways of trying to control their world, The Good People was inspired by a true story. The historical setting is vivid and engrossing. The land and the society are beautifully drawn. Kent gives Nance a true love of nature's beauty, even as she live in lonely filth and pain. We enter her mind, learn her backstory, and understand her world.
Nora's grief over her husband's death and the loss of her daughter feeds into her rejection of the child. The Christian priest admonishes Nora to "blind yourself no longer to the sin of pagan delusion." And yet she still hopes to find her grandson returned, unable to separate superstition from science. We cannot approve of Nora's wish, but we understand what brought her to the crisis.
This is not a fast reading, plot driven book, but a character study of a time and a people. There is propulsion to know how the end plays out.
I found myself reflecting on how our world paradigm limits our understanding. Conflicts worldwide are rooted in tribal or religious values coming into conflict with each other or with modern 21st c worldviews.
If a parent does not believe in vaccinations because of religion--or fake news-- and their child dies of a preventable disease, should they be culpable for the child's death? Was Jim Henson's death of a preventable disease a suicide because he refused treatment based on his religion?
This past week the news reported a local doctor performed genital surgery on seven-year-old girls. We consider it mutilation. In spite of education reforms and making it illegal, the ritual persists. It is a cultural norm in African societies, including Muslim, Christian, and Ethiopian Jews. Some say the girls accept it as a part of being a woman. Today I read in the newspaper women's accounts of the horror and pain they endured.
What we believe is not rational. It never has been based on science or logic. Does it exonerate us for the harm we inflict out of our best intentions?
Hannah Kent offers us The Good People, the imagining of a historical event. May it open our eyes.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
The Good People
Hannah Kent
Little, Brown & Co.
Publication Date: Sept 19, 2017
$27.00 hardcover
ISBN:9780316243964
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