Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent was my book club's September book. We had a great hour-long discussion.

I immensely enjoyed the book. Set in 1829-1830 in Iceland, I felt transported to a distant land where nothing was familiar. Windows held fishskin panes and women gathered moss to boil, the names were unpronounceable and exotic, the landscape gray and harsh. Kent's attention to detail permeated the novel. 

Historical documents offered the skeleton upon which Kent imagined her story of the last execution in Iceland in 1830. After Agnes was convicted of murdering her lover, she spent time jailed in a dark cell. When she is released, she is transported to a distant and inhospitable area to be housed with a family while waiting out her time. Agnes is unwanted and feared, treated like a servant. A priest is sent to help her repent and save her soul. He elicits her story, a heartbreaking tale of neglect, poverty, and abuse. In reaching for love, Agnes is betrayed, but she did not murder her love for revenge. 

We do stereotype people and draw away and judge people. But when we hear their stories we can have compassion and understanding. The family that housed Agnes undergo that transformation and it is marvelous to watch.

Agnes and her mother and other servants in the story are powerless pawns in the hands of their male employers. Their alternative is to be unsheltered and unfed in the cruel ice and snow. For all its otherworldliness in time and space, Agnes's story is all too familiar: A neglected and abandoned child is lured by the prospect of love into an abusive relationship.

When I read Kent's second book The Good People, which I very much enjoyed, I read many reviewers who raved over Burial Rites. Read my review of The Good People here.

from the publisher:

Inspired by a true story, Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites was shortlisted for The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, The Guardian First Book Award and The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards.

In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnúsdóttir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of her lover.

Agnes is sent to wait out her final months on the farm of district officer Jón Jónsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderer in their midst, the family avoid contact with Agnes. Only Tóti, the young assistant priest appointed Agnes’s spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her. As the year progresses and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes’s story begins to emerge and with it the family’s terrible realization that all is not as they had assumed. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn't she?

Based on actual events, Burial Rites is a moving novel about the truths we claim to know and the ways in which we interpret what we’re told. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland’s formidable landscape, in which every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

See photos of Iceland and learn about the upcoming movie here.