Hannah Kent

Have only read Hannah Kent's debut, "Burial Rites". Bleak and powerful, Iceland and its isolated communities the setting. Very good writing and a ton of research behind it.
Imagine people back then having to house convicts before punishment was carried out, especially when there were children in the household, let alone stuck on a remote farm!

Geraldine Brooks’ "Year Of Wonders" has been out for a few years now but that felt new and different when it came out too. Another slice of grim history, English this time, and unusual subject matter.

I read Burial Rites and His Bloody Project v close together and agree they have a similar feel. I loved both.

Burial Rites is probably my favourite book ever. Just last Thursday I was boring the pants off encouraging a friend to read it.

I don't take to the concept/storyline of the second one, and have read reviews much like some above - loved BR, this isn't as good.

A very good book I read recently is His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet - sort of a male scottish crofters version of BR (but not quite as good cos nothing is.)

Another book I think those who loved BR would enjoy is Mudbound by Hilary Jordan - absolutely excellent. Her second one was nowhere near as good!!

I loved Burial Rites. It reminded me of Alias Grace, which I read many years ago and adored.

I didn't realise she'd written a 2nd, so thanks for the heads up!

I have Burial Rites waiting on my to read pile: I reserved it at the library immediately after finishing TGP which I thought was excellent. I am really looking forward to starting it, more so after having read everyone's reviews here!

I've only skimmed TGP in a bookshop, but I didn't care for it -- it felt to me like a stilted fictionalising of a folklore and a society the author didn't entirely understand and hadn't found a language for. (It may be that Icelanders would feel similarly about Burial Rites, which I far preferred...)

If you found the subject interesting, OP, I really, really recommend a wonderful non-fiction book HK acknowledges in her notes to TGP Angela Bourke's The Burning of Bridget Cleary, about a famous 1895 murder of a Tipperary woman by her husband and his family, with the defence at the trial being that they believed she was a fairy changeling, not the real Bridget. Bourke, who is a folklore scholar, is brilliant on rural Irish society in the 1890s, and the function of folkloric beliefs in that society why the independent, financially-secure, childless, possibly unfaithful Bridget might not have fitted into normative ideas of rural Irish womanhood.

It's as gripping as any novel I've ever read.

I've read them both, and I think I maybe preferred TGP. It was so tragic, and the suspense of waiting for "that thing" to happen, because it was inevitable. Very sad.

I heard that too, but I haven't heard anything else about it for a good year or so. I'm always surprised at the number of people who I really have to sell it to "yes it's set in Iceland, 200 years ago, and it's about a murder, but it's really good"

(Sorry, didn't read your post properly as was excited). I've only read Burial Rites.

Oh my goodness I love it! I recommend it to so many people.

I was recommended it by a local book shop and wasn't aure, but got into it immediately.