A Good Read

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

In 1830 the last public execution in Iceland took place. (You can still see the specially commissioned axe in the National Museum of Reykjavik here). A man and a woman were beheaded for a murder committed on a remote farm. There being no prisons in Iceland in those days, the condemned woman had been held for the winter before her execution at a farm where she'd lived as a young girl, guarded by the farmer's wife and daughters. Hannah Kent has written her version of the real life story.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family avoids Agnes as much as they can. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has chosen to be her spiritual guardian, makes an effort to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard, and after learning more about Agnes’ story the family become more understanding of her. 

It’s a very good read. The author has captured a dramatic existence in a hostile environment, beginning with the the endless days of an Arctic summer, "the sun warming the bones of the earth"; then, as Agnes's end approaches, "autumn has been pushed aside by a wind driving flurries of snow up against the croft, and the air is as thin as paper", and, by her last days, "snow lay over the valley like linen". The rhythms of farm work: shearing, lambing, milking, slaughter, and then the interval of the Icelandic winter when even in an emergency there is nowhere to go and no possibility of getting there anyway. I could feel the starkness of the time, the place and their lives.

∼ Happy Reading∼ 

Polly x