Burial Rites: A Novel

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, September 2013: Exploring the final months of an Icelander maid charged with murder and condemned to execution in 1829 is hardly a reader-friendly subject for a novel. But in her mesmerizing debut, Hannah Kent offers a retelling of actual historical events that makes it impossible not to become invested in understanding the guilt--or innocence--of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland. Kent seamlessly shifts between historical documents and different characters’ perspectives with a lyricism that makes every tortured thought and charged interaction echo in the silence of Iceland’s stark landscape. As details of Agnes’s involvement in the crime come to light, this thoroughly researched debut novel asks us to examine the significance of stories--both the ones that others tell about us and the ones that we tell about ourselves--ultimately offering Agnes a chance at a more compassionate story than the one history has given her. --Heather Hunt