Hannah Kent

[BeeThirtythree]

Burial Rites, debut by Hannah Kent is one of the best books I have read. I was so eager to read the second book, The Good People, Just discussing it with DH and wondered if anyone has read these books...views?

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.

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

Oh the wait for the second book...the agony, the anticipation...Well, I enjoyed it and the writing was just as lyrical,well researched but just not that 'Everybody must read this' as Burial Rites! I look forward to see what others thought of The Good People...while I wait for another offering from Miss Kent!

Apparently there is a film in the making of BR, it would be worth watching for the scenery alone!

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"

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.

Agent I found I felt that with BR...waiting for the 'inevitable', not so much with TGP. TGP was tragic, but lacking the 'eerie' atmosphere of BR.

The historical references/language/research is just fantastic for both books. Did anyone find it challenging keeping up with the characters names in BR/TGP?

Yes, I can imagine trying to sell a book about a murder, set in Iceland would be slightly difficult...' oh and it's set 200 years ago' 😉
written by an Australian (student)!

Can anybody recommend anything similar to Hannah Kent?

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 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 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!

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

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.