Review: Burial Rites

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Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This novel was just about perfect. There are few times you read a book and the author just completely gets it right, but this was one of those books. Burial Rites was an immensely engrossing story about Agnes Magnusdottir, a young Icelandic maid, awaiting her death sentence for the murder of two young men. Following her sentence she is sent to live in isolation on a farm to await her execution. The story follows her interactions with the family that is forced to keep her on their farm and the priest that is charged with guiding her to her death.

It is a heart-breaking novel that unravels the details of the murders and the desperation of a young girl who is hopelessly in love. The setting and storytelling feels very authentic to the time period and I was able to put myself in the minds and lives of the characters. I honestly don't know much about Iceland in the 1800s... or any other time period... but the novel presented a very mysterious country and the harshness it requires to live in a place that is so unforgiving.

I absolutely loved everything about this book. Things didn't always turn out as I wanted them to but that made the book even more perfect. Hannah Kent includes an afterword that states that the story is based on actual historic events from Icelandic history, and I felt that she did them justice. This is a must-read for lovers of historical fiction!



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