REVIEW: Burial Rites (Hannah Kent)

Book: Burial Rites

Author: Hannah Kent

Premise: Agnes is sent to wait out her final months on the farm of district officer Jón Jónsson. 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, Agnes’s story begins to emerge and with it the family’s terrible realization that all is not as they had assumed.

If you have read or seen Alias Grace, this book is quite similar in premise. We have a convicted murderess giving her side of the story. While the story was a bit slow to start with, it soon picked up and had me hooked.

The author has done a brilliant job at setting the scene. You get a real sense of rural Iceland - the harsh, cold weather and how isolated individual farms are. Plot wise, I think we could've got rid of the priest and just let Agnes tell her story to the wife as I loved the gradual respect between them.

The story is based on real people and I liked how each chapter started with a genuine letter from the time.