The Good People by Hannah Kent

After reading and being so impressed with Hannah Kent’s debut novel, Burial Rites, I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into her next one, The Good People. Like its predecessor, it is impeccably researched, this time immersing the reader in late 1800s Ireland within a small community that, when an orphaned child with serious incapacities is given to his grandparents to raise, finds itself beset with misfortune and death.

Focusing on three primary female characters and taking a true story for inspiration, Kent does a marvellous job of recreating the superstitions of a community clinging to pagan beliefs while trying to embrace modernity and the rule of the Catholic Church. For three women, the grieving grandmother, Nora, the young maid she hires to help her look after her grandson, Mary, and the “handy woman” and local healer, “Nance” the collision between old worlds and new, between faith in one set of beliefs and another, and the drive to nurture and protect is very real and painful.

Evoking the terrible poverty, lack of literacy and struggles of the small village in which these women dwell, the intimacy it creates – which is both blessing and curse – and the stark reality of their daily lives as they try to eke out an existence, Kent also manages to expose the beauty in their almost wilful ignorance; the way they embrace the magic of nature and the intrusion of culture (all while negotiating the villainy or good intentions of others), attributing that which they don’t or won’t understand to the “good people” or fairy folk. Convenient scapegoats as well as explanations for the inconceivable and painful, the “good people” are as much a part of their lives as their neighbours and the landscape from which they attempt to draw a living and life.

But not everyone believes in the “good people” or the powers and malice they’re purported to wield. Nor do some believe in the good intentions of those who cede to the fairies’ demands and desires, seeking to appease them. As Kent demonstrates, when two different ways of viewing the world and those who inhabit it collide, catastrophe and tragedy are sure to follow.

Heart-wrenching, mesmerising, beautifully written, I found myself urging characters to make different choices, to open their eyes and hearts. Flung into the midst of all this superstition – of the religious and pagan kind – as impossible and improbable as it was, as well as the way certain powers and vulnerabilities were abused for others’ gain, it’s both a relief and a wrench to leave it.

Simply superb. An engrossing and involved read that will leave you emotionally exhausted but lexically satisfied.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: No Comments

Book Review: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

This is an extraordinary book that, for reasons I understand, has had a slightly mixed (but mostly very positive) reception.

An historical novel set in Burial RitesIceland during the early 1800s, it’s based on the true story of the last days of convicted murderer, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, and the times she spends interred with the family of an official, Jon Jonsson, awaiting her execution.

Arriving at the farm one day against the wishes of  Jonsson and his wife, Margaret, and their two daughters, Agnes presents as a threat to the fairly closed and private family and the community of which they’re a part. Because of the brutality of the murder she’s accused of committing (two men bludgeoned and stabbed to death in a remote farmhouse), Agnes has been judged not only guilty but also monstrous and not fit to join civilisation before she even enters the house of her new captors.

However, Agnes is not what anyone expected – not the official’s wife, her daughters, or the assistant priest, Totti, who Agnes has requested tend to her spiritual needs in her last months.

As the days pass and autumn unfolds into winter, shared duties and the close confines of the living arrangements within the Jonsson home means that the cool and suspicious distance between prisoner and family/workers cannot be maintained. Facades crumble, assumptions about people are challenged and, most importantly, Agnes gets to tell her version of the events leading up to the murder.

Burial Rites is a powerful narrative that nonetheless gently captures and captivates the reader. The beautiful, haunting prose with its vivid descriptions of the stark but stunning landscape and weather is juxtaposed against the always awful reality of both Agnes’ approaching death and the murders that underpin the present situation. Characters are gorgeously drawn, fiction and fact interwoven through the insertion of letters, quotes from Icelandic sagas and accounts from those actually involved, melding into a story that is so affecting and yet laden with meaning as well.

I found the book impossible to put down. It was slow in parts – especially at the beginning where each member of the Jonsson family is presented and Agnes is introduced “offstage”. The peace and ordinariness that marks the Jonsson’s lives is soon to be shattered and I loved the gentle build to this point, the setting up of anxiety, tension and righteousness as well. We first “see” Agnes through the Jonssons’ eyes, having had our perceptions coloured by theirs. It’s a clever strategy and the way Kent has Agnes defy these is subtle and heart-wrenching. It makes the inevitability that the book finally tumbles towards all the more searing and difficult to contemplate let alone finally accept.

I thought this book was a masterpiece and have found Kent, in the interviews she’s given over the novel’s success, to be modest and fascinating as she explains why she wrote the book and discusses its reception.

A superb, challenging and evocative book that lives in your head and heart long after you put it down.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: No Comments