burial rites - hannah kent
I NEED to write about Burial Rites by Hannah Kent- it's a book I was very much looking forward to (see my last post), and yet I ended up feeling a bit ambivalent about it, so I have been itching to discuss it with someone since finishing it. It would be ideal for a book group, but unfortunately we didn't read it in book group, so blog it is! Burial Rites has an intriguing set-up- a woman (Agnes Magnusdottir) is condemned to death for murder but, since she is living in Iceland in the 19th century and there are no jails, so until her execution she is lodged in a remote farm with with the family of a local official. During her stay she is able to talk to a priest, who is instructed to prepare her for death. To him, and to us, she relates her story. So interwoven with the story of Agnes life at the farm, living with a family who are apprehensive abot hosting a convicted murder and facing her impending death, is the story of Agnes life up to this point, leading to the answer the ...