Burial Rites*

Hannah Kent. Pan Macmillan. (384p) ISBN: 9781447233176

Burial Rites

My manager had been pressing me to widen my reading material and when she found I had never read any historical fiction that didn’t have a fantastical element to it I was told in no uncertain terms to read this book, and she loaned me her copy.

Set in early 19th century Iceland, Burial Rites explores the story of Agnus Magnúsdóttir a convicted murder and the families that have to house her until her sentence can be carried out.

The novel seeks to humanise Agnus, who all the other characters see as a monster. The priest tries to see Agnus as something more than a monster through the filter of his Christianity.

As the story unfolds we see that there is far more than initially stated and the threads and relationships grow and interweave in a wonderfully lyrical way.

Hannah Kent (and my manager 😉 ) has opened up a completely new genre for me to explore with this wonderful book.