2 Followers
25 Following
Dem

Dem

Currently reading

Alex
Pierre Lemaitre
The Glass Room
Simon Mawer
Peter the Great: His Life and World
Robert K. Massie
If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children
Rebecca Morris, Gregg Olsen
Skin Deep
Neill Nugent
The Good Daughter
Karin Slaughter
A Boy in Winter
Rachel Seiffert
The Tie That Binds
Kent Haruf
The Idiot (Everyman's Library, #254)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Larissa Volokhonsky, Richard Pevear
The Velvet Hours
Alyson Richman

Burial Rites

Burial Rites - Hannah Kent Just finished reading Burial Rites for the 3rd time (Book Club Choice) and its still manages to pack a punch third time around. This is one of my 10 ten favourite books as it is just so well written and so atmospheric.

Burial Rites is the extraordinary haunting debut novel by Hannah Kent an Australian Writer. This book is set in Iceland in 1829 and tells the story of Agnes Magnusdottir who was found guilty of murdering her employer as he slept. She was condemned to death. She was the last person to be public executed in Iceland and this book is based on true events.


I read an interview with the author and she spent two years researching this story and the back round information to this story benefits greatly from this research as not only do we learn the what happened to Agnes we learn about a place, its peoples the customs and traditions or the time, their religious beliefs and the beautiful and harrowing landscape is described so well that you get a wonderful sense of time and place from Kent's writing. This is something I appreciate in a story as it enhances the book and the reader learns something about a place and time with which they may not be familiar.

Kent's powerful and beautiful prose takes a story that could have been depressing and gives it a wonderful haunting feel to it and reminded me of the feeling I had when I read Wuthering Heights. I loved the tone of the story and as I listened to this as an audio book, the narration was perfect for the story and really made an excellent audio book. I especially enjoyed the pronunciation of surnames of people and places in the story and the explanation that was at the beginning of the book. I am not a big fan of audio books as I much prefer to read a book but the narrator really was excellent. I will probably buy the paperback version someday just to read it again.

I loved how the author gives you the story from different points of view and you find yourself immersed in Agnes telling of her story as imagined by the author. I think I can see how Hannah Kent was so taken with Agnes and the events of 1829.

Burial rites is a thought provoking and deeply moving story and I would highly recommend it but it may not please everybody as it is not an uplifting story and some may find it rather dark.
It made a terrific book club read as plenty to discuss and very thought provoking.

I have also read [b:The Good People|29248613|The Good People|Hannah Kent|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467899607s/29248613.jpg|49494722] by [a:Hannah Kent|6569504|Hannah Kent|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1470708527p2/6569504.jpg][b:The Good People|29248613|The Good People|Hannah Kent|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467899607s/29248613.jpg|49494722] and rated it 3 stars.