Burial Rites in Around the World

Jul 23, 2013 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: cold-weather-islands, orange-prize, around-the-world, location-iceland, read2014, reading-envy-podcast, baileys-womens-prize

In my year of reading Icelandic literature, this book had to be included. The author is not Icelandic but spent quite a bit of time there doing research for the book. Burial Rites is the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland, for the murder of Nathan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson. Kent found many conflicting accounts of the story and the character of Agnes, and took the opportunity to focus on developing her story.

One thing I've noticed about books written about Ic In my year of reading Icelandic literature, this book had to be included. The author is not Icelandic but spent quite a bit of time there doing research for the book. Burial Rites is the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland, for the murder of Nathan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson. Kent found many conflicting accounts of the story and the character of Agnes, and took the opportunity to focus on developing her story.

One thing I've noticed about books written about Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Hebrides - authors really love to describe how everything smells. I will forever remember the description of whale blubber being ground into the dirt where people sleep in The Old Man and His Sons, and this novel does the same.

Even love is described in a combination of strong smells:

"...I was so happy to be desired. When the smell of him, of sulfur and crushed herbs, and horse-sweat and the smoke from his forge, made me dizzy with pleasure. With possibility."

While this combination of smells would be difficult to translate to pleasure in our modern times, Kent is effective in creating a multisensory experience of the Iceland of the early 1800s, one that is beholden to Denmark for judiciary decisions. That creates the drama in this story, because the convicted killers are sent to live with minor government officials and their families in northern Iceland prior to the executions. Agnes bonds with the family she stays with, as well as Toti, a young assistant minister. Her story is very gradually told in the days before her beheading.

I don't think any of that is a spoiler, this is after all based on a documented account. Other than smells and tastes and the landscape, Kent captures the very literate Iceland of the 19th century, the same country that churned out the "farmer poets" of the same era.

"I like the sagas best. As they say, blíndur er bóklaus maður. Blind is a man without a book."

I should mention the sagas while I'm at it. A strange pattern happens in Icelandic lit, one I've seen in the poetry and in the best known novelist of the 20th and 21st century - Halldór Laxness. The sagas are so ingrained in the people that somehow they fall into the patterns of the storylines in their own lives. This happens with Agnes too. Despite the fact that Agnes is a historical figure, the parallel between her life and the Laxdæla Saga is not lost on Hannah Kent, and she includes bits of it in the novel. Perhaps all historical figures are set to become their own hero(ine)s.

And now I'm even more convinced I need to read these sagas!

In another happy coincidence, Burial Rites was recently shortlisted for the Bailey's Womens Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Orange Prize. Of the titles I've read, this could definitely give Adichie a run for her money.

Discussed on Episode 6 of the Reading Envy podcast! ...more

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Dec 29, 2013 Friederike Knabe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: australian-lit

Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last person to be executed in Iceland in the year 1829. Charged and convicted as accessory to murder of her master, she died at the age of thirty four. Abandoned by her mother as a child and with questionable paternity, Agnes was destined to grow up in poverty as a work maid, moving from one remote sheep farm to another to find food, shelter and, if she was fortunate, some warmth and even friendship. So much for the basic facts. Hannah Kent's debut novel, BURIAL RITES Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last person to be executed in Iceland in the year 1829. Charged and convicted as accessory to murder of her master, she died at the age of thirty four. Abandoned by her mother as a child and with questionable paternity, Agnes was destined to grow up in poverty as a work maid, moving from one remote sheep farm to another to find food, shelter and, if she was fortunate, some warmth and even friendship. So much for the basic facts. Hannah Kent's debut novel, BURIAL RITES, tells Agnes's story and the circumstances that led to her death. It could have been bleak and disconcerting. That turned out not to be the case despite the heart-wrenching story at the centre of it. Kent's writing captured me from the novel's beginning and much of it has stayed with me for a long time after finishing: the in-depth developed and convincing characters and the hauntingly beautiful evocation of the landscape in the depth of winter.

Based on extensive use of local and contemporary documents and even oral sources, passed down the generations, the author attempted, successfully in my mind, to shed a fresh and multifaceted light on Agnes rather than a harsh black and white portrait. It is one example where the fictional treatment of the historical series of events can go much deeper than court documents could and, possibly, reach into a deeper truths that are underlying the circumstances of Agnes's life and struggles that had led to her conviction.

Imagining the winter months she lived in close proximity and under the roof of the sheep farmer Jón Jónsson and his family, Kent describes the slowly changing attitude of the family members, from hatred and fear to reluctant acceptance. One of the daughters and the mother are portrait with great empathy and understanding for both sides. Some of the dialog between the young priest and Agnes and her exchanges with Jónsson's wife are memorable. Kent's lyrical and expressive description of the harsh winter in remote rural Iceland's stands out for me as an especially powerful element in the novel: the winter storms are like additional characters in narrative.

Of course, while reading BURIAL RITES, Margaret Atwood's novel, ALIAS GRACE, comes to mind. Set only a few years later (1843) Atwood's novel is the fictionalized account of another young woman, a servant girl called Grace, sentenced to death for the involvement in the murder of her employer. While the novels are very different they explore how the fate of young women/girls of servant status could be very fragile and precarious. In both cases the social environment of the time brought to light an understanding that guilt was, possibly, only one side of the story. ...more

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Aug 28, 2013 Daisy rated it really liked it

Shelves: knitters-mentioned, iceland, aroundtheworld2014

Almost 5 stars because I was so riveted and moved by the writing and the characters and the setting. How did Hannah Kent come up with this? I wondered. Knowing nothing about the book before I started (that's how I like it), I was then sort of disappointed (view spoiler) All the same, it's a very worthwhile read, ...more

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Sep 10, 2013 Irene rated it it was amazing

Shelves: have-a-copy

Set in starkly austere, weather-driven, sparsely inhabited, early 1800's Iceland, this stunningly engrossing historical literary inaugural novel of one murderess’s last days not only swiftly seizes your unassuming mind within the first few pages, it also beckons so incessantly that you are driven to re-arrange your life to answer its relentless call.

Impeccably researched and ingeniously written, this masterful debut, dramatic, yet luminous and emotionally riveting tale grants the reader an intim ...more

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May 23, 2016 Cooper rated it it was amazing

I had really set myself up to not like this book. Usually when I read numerous great reviews and people saying what a phenomenal book they read, the hairs on my back stand on end and I am immediately suspect that there's something about the book that needs to be hyped.

In this case, I was wrong. The fictionalized true story of Angus Magnusdottir was emotionally compelling. This woman, whether guilty of murder or not, represented a time when women had no voice. Their options limited and their stat ...more

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Jul 09, 2013 Toni rated it it was amazing

Shelves: multi-cultural, historical-fiction, crime-fiction, iceland

It's always interesting to me to ponder on the fact that we all have the same words at our disposal and yet, in the hands of a gifted writer the arrangement of those words becomes so much more than the sum of their parts. In reading Burial Rites, I felt transported to the cold, damp, smelly badstofa along with Agnes while she slowly reeled out the details of her unhappy life, and so answered the questions of how she came to be in this place.

You wont find this an uplifting story, but I think you ...more

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