Burial Rites

Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last person executed by Iceland, in 1830, for a crime committed in 1828. That crime, which Agnes was accused of committing along with one other man and one other woman, was the murder of two farmers at Illugastaðir. At the time, and since, Agnes was largely regarded as the epitome of a murderess, motivated, perhaps, by a combination of greed and revenge. Some went so far as to brand her a witch. Iceland, like much of the world at that time, was a poor and often brutal place to live; the cold and darkness that reach through the pages and grab the reader only magnify this. By her own admission in the author's note, Hannah Kent has tried to create a more ambiguous portrait of Agnes. 

In this, she succeeds thoroughly. Awaiting her execution - beheading by axe - Agnes is transferred to a small, poor farm to be housed with a farm couple and their two daughters. The family has had no say in the matter and their treatment of Agnes reflects this. Slowly, though, as they come to know her, the reader understands that they also begin to question what they believed of the woman in their midst. 

The characters in Burial Rites are the novel's strength. Each is distinct and well-developed and Kent should be thanked for giving the main characters names that, if still Icelandic, are easy enough on the eyes, mind, and tongue of an English speaker. In addition to Agnes, there are daughters Steina and Lauga and their parents Jon and Margret (who seems pretty clearly to be suffering from a bad case of consumption). If the characters are the strength, the organization is the weakness. The viewpoints shift constantly, within chapters and without warning. Initially this nearly drove me to distraction; I became used to the style.

Burial Rites exudes darkness and cold, illness and sadness. Yet, it manages not to be steeped in depression, a fine line that Kent has navigated deftly. In the end it is a fine work of historical fiction with strong undercurrents of ambiguity.