Tag: Hannah Kent

6 Degrees of Separation

Six Degrees of Separation: From ‘Murmur’ to ‘Academy Street’

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Six degrees of separation logo for memeIt’s the first Saturday of the month, which can only mean one thing: it’s Six Degrees of Separation time!

You can find out more about this meme via Kate’s blog, but essentially every month Kate chooses a particular book as a starting point from which to create a chain by linking to six other books using common themes.

Here’s this month’s #6Degrees. Hyperlinks will take you to my reviews.

The starting point is:

‘Murmur’ by Will Eaves (2018)

I haven’t read Murmur — about the inner life of Alan Turing — which won the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize last month. This book was also joint winner of the (lesser known) 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize, which is for the best fiction published by publishers with fewer than five full-time employees. Another book on the longlist for that prize was…

Soviet Milk

1. ‘Soviet Milk’ by Nora Ikstena (2018)
This powerful novella, translated from Latvian, explores motherhood, the freedom to pursue your calling and life under Soviet rule. It is a highly emotional read (I cried at the end) very much focused on a strained mother-daughter relationship, which is also the focus of…

My Mother, A Serial Killer

2. ‘My Mother, A Serial Killer’ by Hazel Baron and Janet Fife-Yeomans (2018)
This is the real life story of an Australian woman who murdered her husband in the 1950s, then killed two other men she knew. She only came to justice after her eldest daughter, Hazel Baron, turned her into police. Another story about a woman accused of murder is…

3. ‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent (2013)
This is a fictionalised account of the life and crimes of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, who was the last person to be executed in Iceland. Agnes had been convicted for her role in the murder of two men in 1828 but had no recourse to a fair trial. Her tale is a tragic one of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is also what happens to the protagonist in…

4. ‘Alias Grace’ by Margaret Atwood (1997)
Did she do it or didn’t she do it? This is the question that plagues the reader throughout this extraordinary novel based on a true crime in which teenage maid Grace Marks was accused of murdering her employer and his mistress in 19th century Canada. Found guilty, her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. A doctor working in the burgeoning field of psychiatry tries to secure her a pardon, but you are never quite sure of his real motives. Another novel starring a psychiatrist is…

5. ‘Trauma’ by Patrick McGrath (2009)
In this story we meet a psychiatrist coming to terms with the break-up of his marriage seven years earlier. He treats patients who have gone through traumatic events but seems largely unable to confront his own demons, including a problematic relationship with his own (alcoholic) mother. The story is set in Manhattan, which is also the setting for…

6. ‘Academy Street’ by Mary Costello(2014)
This is a profoundly moving story about one woman’s quiet, unassuming life from her girlhood in rural Ireland to her retirement (as nurse) in New York more than half a century later. I read this one when it first came out in paperback and it was my favourite read of that year, helped partly by the beautiful pared back language but also the 1950s Manhattan setting. It remains one of the most emotionally potent stories I’ve ever read — of loneliness, of literature, of never quite fitting in. I wish she’d hurry up and write another novel!

So that’s this month’s #6Degrees: from an award-winning novel about a British cryptanalyst to a story about a woman’s life lead quietly in 1950s Manhattan. Have you read any of these books? 

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, Hannah Kent, historical fiction, Iceland, literary fiction, Picador, Publisher, Setting

‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent

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Burial-rites

Fiction – hardcover; Picador; 378 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I may possibly be the last person in the world to read Hannah Kent’s extraordinary debut novel, Burial Rites, which has been lauded far and wide and nominated for almost every prize going since publication last year.

It is one of those rare Australian novels that has achieved international acclaim — and with good reason. This is a universal tale of what it is like to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, with no recourse to proper justice, and it tells the story in such a frank and interesting way that it is difficult to put down. I read it in a matter of days.

A fictionalised true story

Set in Iceland in 1829, the book is based on a true story, as the author explains in her note at the end: “Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last person to be executed in Iceland, convicted for her role in the murders of Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson on the night between the 13th and 14th of March 1828, at Illugastadir, on the Vatnsnes Peninsula, North Iceland.” Interspersed with real letters and court documents, the narrative fictionalises the events leading up to the murders and beyond.

When the book opens we meet Agnes almost a year after she has been sentenced to death by beheading.  She has been sent to the north to work her final months on a farm owned by the District Officer, his wife Magrét and two daughters, Lauga and Steina, all of whom regard her with suspicion and distrust.

Allowed access to a spiritual adviser to prepare her for “her meeting with Our Lord”, she requests that Assistant Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson, a young priest she met in passing years earlier, take on this role. But it is a task he is ill-equipped to handle.

Kent sets up her story nicely with a triumvirate of characters —  a convicted killer, a family that doesn’t trust her, and a man of religion — but what happens next isn’t really what you might expect.

During her time on the farm, Agnes changes: she grows in confidence, is less fearful of the future and begins to remember incidents from her past, which are told flashback style (in the first person). But she also has a profound effect on the people with whom she must now live and work among — they begin to see her in a new light, particularly when she tentatively opens up and tells her sometimes shocking, always surprising version of events.

Effortless read

What I loved most about Kent’s story is the effortless way it is told. Her prose style is clean and compelling, although the language — particularly the idioms and some of the dialogue — does occasionally feel too contemporary for the 19th century.

But the way in which the narrative builds and switches between third person (for the District Officer’s family and the reverend) and first person (for Agnes) is one of the book’s great strengths. Not only does it build momentum and provide insights into all of the characters thoughts, it gives the author an effective vehicle for dramatising what happened on the fateful night through the eyes of the person charged with the crime.

Perhaps the only real problem I had with this novel (and I suspect this is unique to me) is that I felt like I’d read it all before — it did not feel as fresh or as original as other reviewers have stated. But I suspect that’s because I’ve spent the best part of 10 years working my way through Arnuldur Indridason’s Reykjavik series. While his novels are set in Iceland in contemporary times, many of them focus on historical crimes, and they’re not dissimilar to Agnes’ situation.

That said Burial Rites is a great read — a proper page-turner with believable characters, a compelling plot that is deftly handled, and a narrative that “zips along” (as a 2011 Booker judge might want to say). It is an incredibly assured debut and it will be interesting to see what Kent comes up with next because for sheer audaciousness — and attention grabbing marketability — this one is going to be hard to top.