BURIAL RITES
By Hannah Kent
Picador. 378 pages. £12.99
ISBN 978 1 447 233 169
Scandinavian noir is fashionable at the moment.
From TV detective series to crime novels, there seems to be a considerable appetite for the seemingly brutal and brooding lives of our near neighbours. Although this book is set in Iceland in the first half of the 19th century, it falls into the same category. Two maids and a farm labourer have been sentenced to death for the violent murder of their employer. As there is no prison on Iceland, they are sent to board with farming families while they wait for execution. Burial Rites narrates the stay of Agnes Magnussdottir, the oldest of the convicted, as she returns to the valley where she spent her childhood.
Misogyny, rights & Rowling
It might have seemed as if the isolation of lockdown was making people mad last month when the stars of …