Burial Rites - Hannah Kent

Hannah Kent  born in Adelaide in 1985, traveled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange programme, where she first heard the story of Agnes Magnusdottir, which inspired her to write Burial rites, which won many awards. 

Landscape is beautiful, there is lot of pain, derived out of loneliness and poverty, the prose is catching, and the plot is a little different, set a couple of centuries before, where Agnes Magnusdottir and Fridrik Sigurdsson  were hanged to death in 1828 for killing Natan Ketilsson. Icelanders traditionally have  patronymic naming system, whereby a child's last name is derived from fathers first name, with affication of  - son or  -dottir. Agnes was the last person to be publicly beheaded in Iceland, and Burial Rites is the fictionalised account of her story. The story revolves around the three culprits who were charged with the crime, and in flash back, on their lives and what lead to it. 

Like a woman, the Sea is a nag. - Nathan had said. 

Agnes is sent to wait out her final months on the farm of distict officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters who are horrifed to have a convicted murderer in their midst. Toti an young assistant priest is appointed as her guardian, who is compelled to understand her. As the year progresses, Agnes's story begin to emerge, and the family start to realise that all is not as they had assumed. 

“To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.”

Agnes being left behind as a young child with a stone in her mouth, to her foster mother's death in the same farm that she is in now, to her walking all the way to be with Nathan, and finally the events that leads to his death, are so lyrically written, with insight to some handy home made medicines, and farm tricks, which show how much of experience Agnes had. 

'I was worst to the one I loved best' - Laxdala Saga ; The book is indeed a combination of Fire and Ice and was 38th of 2020.