Our first two weeks of By Jove Book Club have been non-fiction-heavy. Fear not, those who need a little more escapism: this month, we finally have a novel!
Not just a novel, but a historical novel, and, coming off t
he back of our recent season of shows, no less than a historical novel about an allegedly violent woman. Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites takes as its subject the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be publicly executed in Iceland. In 1828, she was accused, with two others, of killing two men; all three of the alleged murderers were sentenced to death. Iceland had no prisons at the time, so Agnes was sent to live on a farm. While there, she was visited regularly by a young priest.
The story that Kent tells is that of Agnes’ stay on the farm of Kornsá in the lead up to her execution. She arrives weary, filthy, downtrodden, and ready to meet her fate; the family of the farm, Jón and Margrét and their two daughters, Steina and Lauga, vary from caution to hostility in their attitude towards her and the fact that they must live with a murderess. Even the young priest Tóti finds it difficult to speak to Agnes at first, despite her having requested him personally. Over time, Agnes becomes closer with the priest and certain members of the family, and the sequence of events that led to her present circumstances are revealed.
The narrative is set against the bleak but beautiful pastoral background of 19th century Iceland. The homes seem primitive but cosy, families and servants all sleeping together in one large room. The landscape and the weather seem almost to be characters in themselves, for how frequently and the extent to which they effect the lives of the people trying to make a living in spite of them. The story is told from several perspectives, most often Margrét, Tóti, and Agnes herself – these last sections written in the first person and present tense, in contrast to the others, making Agnes seem more immediately present to the reader, but still offering multifarious viewpoints of each character. Chapters begin with translated and adapted versions of real documents from the legal proceedings, poems, and extracts from the Icelandic sagas, all of which serve to contextualise the events of the novel within a specific culture and moment in time.
This is Kent’s first novel, and her prose is beautiful, painting an exquisite picture of Iceland and one woman’s suffering within it. I’m a particular fan of books that create such a vivid image of a place that I have no knowledge of that I can see it clearly in my mind; after reading Burial Rites, I almost feel like I’ve visited Iceland. The development of relationships is handled with care and finesse; in particular, I found the growing and changing relationship between Agnes and Margrét especially believable, touching, and very human. The narrative is steady and static, focused almost exclusively on Kornsá, though with flashbacks and some other short sections set elsewhere, particularly in the second half of the novel at the home and site of the killing of Natan Ketilsson, one of Agnes’ alleged victims. But that static slowness is given weight by the sense of dread hanging over the proceedings in the form of Agnes’ imminent execution, and the reader can never forget where all this is leading. For someone who reads (and cries) so much, it may be surprising that few books have ever made me cry; this one did.
Burial Rites was released in 2013, and has picked up several awards since, particularly in Kent’s home country of Australia.
