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A review by doriereads
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
4.0
Wow, this was incredibly bleak. Haunting is not a strong enough word to explain this story… set in the early nineteenth century, it tells the story of Agnes, an Icelandic woman found guilty of murder and sentenced to die. This was a slow and often disturbing book with stunningly poetic prose and vivid descriptions of the setting.
I know it will be a story I remember forever, one horrifyingly based on the real execution of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. Not really sure I’d recommend it though… a downer is an understatement. I docked one star because to me the first half especially felt unnecessarily drawn out, but that slower read might be just right for another reader though.
“You will be lost. There is no final home, there is no burial, there is only a constant scattering, a thwarted journey that takes you everywhere without offering you a way home, for there is no home, there is only this cold island and your dark self spread thinly upon it until you take up the wind’s howl and mimic its loneliness you are not going home you are gone silence will claim you, suck your life down into its black waters and churn out stars that might remember you, but if they do they will not say, they will not say, and if no one will say your name you are forgotten I am forgotten.”
I know it will be a story I remember forever, one horrifyingly based on the real execution of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. Not really sure I’d recommend it though… a downer is an understatement. I docked one star because to me the first half especially felt unnecessarily drawn out, but that slower read might be just right for another reader though.
“You will be lost. There is no final home, there is no burial, there is only a constant scattering, a thwarted journey that takes you everywhere without offering you a way home, for there is no home, there is only this cold island and your dark self spread thinly upon it until you take up the wind’s howl and mimic its loneliness you are not going home you are gone silence will claim you, suck your life down into its black waters and churn out stars that might remember you, but if they do they will not say, they will not say, and if no one will say your name you are forgotten I am forgotten.”