Tag Archives: Hannah Kent

#BookReview ‘Devotion’ by @HannahFKent #historical #emigration

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In Prussia, 1836, fourteen-year-old Hanne lives in a world-within-a-world, a strict religious group where worship must be kept secret and hidden from the sight of neighbours. Devotion by Hannah Kent is the story of Hanne’s persecuted community. They live in fear of expulsion or worse. But when a new family arrives Hanne meets another outsider, Thea, and her life is changed forever. Hannah Kent Kent takes her time with the first half. This is a slow start, a painstaking building of the relationship between Hanne and Thea, drawing the world in which neither fits. As Hanne reaches womanhood, her life is changing in small ways. Her mother increasingly separates her from twin brother Matthias as they are prepared for different adult lives. Hanne simply longs to be free to be in the woods, to listen to the sounds of nature alive. But in times of fear or uncertainty, when she bristles against the strict confines set by her mother, the unshakeable belief of her father, she cleaves to her twin. The glimpse of a different world offered by Thea’s family, the more open way they behave with each other, makes Hanne’s mild dissatisfaction with her life become an acute fear of being trapped.
When the offer of safe passage to Australia comes from a helpful member of their congregation, a new life where they will be able to worship without fear becomes possible. ‘Without my father’s devotion to that Bible I would not be here. Without that Bible, nothing would have happened.’
The story is told in three parts, or ‘days’, and the event occurring at the end of the first day is perhaps not surprising but what follows is. To explain, is to tell too much of the plot. The second part, when the travellers settle in the Adelaide Hills, is slow paced. After the sections in Prussia and onboard ship, the indulgence of the writing in what is already a slow-paced novel begins to drag a little.
Kent’s writing is strongest when describing Hanne’s visceral connections with land and sea, with nature, with animals. She seems to directly commune with living creatures, to hear their voices. There is a magical element – magic or witchcraft – threaded throughout the story which is both a benefit and a curse, a source of division within the Lutherans but a form of communication with the native Peramangk community who live on the land the Lutherans claim for their settlement of Heiligendorf.
The theme of devotion, and love, runs throughout. The love shared by Hanne and Thea, but also Hanne’s love for her brother, her friend Hans and her parents. The devotion both to their shared faith and to each other. It is Hanne alone who feels the connection to nature and her devotion to every living creature, and this sets her apart.
At times the beautiful prose dominates the storyline and I lost track of the moment where the action paused. I admit to skipping chunks. No matter the beauty, the tenderness of the writing, a strong narrative is essential to stop the reader floundering and continue reading.
Basically, this is a love story, of love unobtainable and out of reach, but a love all-consuming.

Read my reviews of Hannah Kent’s two other novels:-
BURIAL RITES
THE GOOD PEOPLE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue
‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier
‘The Ninth Child’ by Sally Magnusson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEVOTION by @HannahFKent https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5wS via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Good People’ by @HannahFKent #historical #folklore

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The Good People by Hannah Kent is a powerful second novel from a writer whose debut was outstanding. It is a tale of rural people in a poor community where superstition and folklore become entangled with one woman’s grief, with tragic results. Conflicting systems of thought come into play – folklore, religion, medicine and legal – and fail to make sense of what happens to Nóra Leahy. The power of the story lies not in black versus white, or logic and education versus peasant superstition, it lies in its characters. Hannah KentCounty Kerry, Ireland, 1826. An isolated village, where gossip goes around and around, where people survive on milk and potatoes and burn turf on the fire. A place where petty grievances are not forgotten, there is no money to pay the doctor, but there are still random acts of kindness. In such a poor community, what happens when the unthinkable happens, where the doctor and priest have no explanation or solution?
The Good People is based on true events, a court case which did happen. In the same year in which her daughter died, Nóra’s husband drops dead in the field leaving her alone to care for her four-year-old grandson Micheál. He cannot walk or speak and neither the doctor nor the priest can offer hope. So Nóra keeps him hidden from the village gossips in the fear that his deformities may be an indication of fairy interference. Unable to cope alone, Nóra employs 14-year-old Mary to milk the cow and fetch the water, and principally to care for Micheál. Soon Mary hears the whispers at the well, that the unnatural child of Nóra Leahy is to blame for the poor harvest, the hens not laying, the thin milk. So Nóra asks Nance Roche for help. Nance is the wise woman of the valley, she knows the plants, the cures, and she talks to the Good People… the fairies.
When Nance suggests the screaming, fitting, feeble child is not really Micheál but a changeling left in his place by the fairies, the three women become embroiled in cures to banish ‘the fairy’. The darkness of the cures attempted on a disabled and sick child is disturbing and, ultimately tragic. The events unfold slowly through the stories of Nóra, Mary and Nance. The writing is beautiful and every page is steeped in the folklore of rural Ireland, this bleak village where poor people live at the edge of survival. It is impossible not to connect with the three women, each so different, while at the time seeing the inevitability of what is to come.
A little historical context. In 1801 the Act of Union was enacted which ended a separate parliament in Dublin with government switching to Westminster. In 1823 in Ireland, Daniel O’Connell began to set up Catholic associations around the country, seeking a repeal of the Act of Union. In 1826 an ‘old woman of very advance age’ known as Anne/Nance Roche was indicted for the wilful murder of Michael Kelliher/Leahy at the summer Tralee assizes in Co. Kerry.
A compelling read.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of Hannah Kent’s two other novels:-
BURIAL RITES
DEVOTION

If you like this, try:-
‘The Western Wind’ by Samantha Harvey
‘Master of Shadows’ by Neil Oliver
‘All the Birds, Singing’ by Evie Wyld

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GOOD PEOPLE by @HannahFKent via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2×7

#BookReview ‘Burial Rites’ by @HannahFKent #historical #crime

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So much has been written about Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, I feel pretty sure that by now you know it is the fictionalised story of an Icelandic woman found guilty of murder in the 1820s. You may possibly also know that this book, rich in Icelandic saga and with Iceland present on every page of the story, is written by a young Australian. Hannah KentIf this book does not win a drawerful of awards, it will make me lose faith in literary awards. The confidence with which the story is told defies the knowledge that this is a debut novel, any allowances I had mentally made for a debut are not required. Not only does Kent write a historical novel set in a foreign country with a difficult language, from page one you are in Iceland. Put aside the names of people, the names of the farms [the map at the front of my edition was much thumbed in the beginning, then forgotten], Iceland surrounds you as you read the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. You sit with her in the badstofa, the smell of the dung walls in your lungs, the dirt under your fingernails.
“The herb plot of Kornsá is overgrown and wild, surrounded by a rough stone wall that has toppled to the ground at one end. Most of the plants have gone to seed, frostbitten roots rotting in the warmer weather, but there are tansies, and little bitter herbs I remember from Natan’s workshop at Illugastadir, and the angelica smells sweetly.” Natan is the man Agnes is found guilty of murdering. Whilst awaiting arrangements for her execution she is placed with a local family – as is the tradition, this being a rural area with no prisons, no police stations, justice is managed locally – who receive a little extra silver in recompense for their service. Her story is told through a series of official letters about the trial, Agnes own voice and that of Tóti, the reverend she requests to prepare her for execution.
Agnes is made to work for her keep, she is not shackled or locked away. The family is poor, an extra pair of hands to work the land is valuable, even if they watch her every minute. Agnes, for her part, enjoys the fresh air during harvest. “I let my body fall into a rhythm. I sway back and forth and let gravity bring the scythe down and through the grass, until I rock steadily. Until I feel that I am not moving myself, and that the sun is driving me. Until I am a puppet of the wind, and of the scythe, and of the long, slow strokes that propel my body forward. Until I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.”
I was gripped from page one, wanting to know the end of the story, not wanting it to end. Kent has combined poetry with a murder mystery – by the way don’t listen to those reviews which class it as Scandi-crime, this is so much more than that.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

See my reviews of two other Hannah Kent novels:-
DEVOTION
THE GOOD PEOPLE

If you like this, try:-
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett
‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BURIAL RITES by @HannahFKent via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-101