Northern Iceland, 1829. A woman condemned to death for murdering her lover. A family forced to take her in. A priest tasked with absolving her.
But all is not as it seems, and time is running out: winter is coming, and with it the execution date. Only she can know the truth. This is Agnes's story.
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[THERE WILL BE AN AUCTION on the 14th March 1828, at Illugastadir, for the valuables the farmer Natan Ketilsson has left behind]***
(Picador, 27 February 2014, first published 10 September 2013, 347 pages, paperback, #popsugarreadingchallenge 2019, a book set in Scandinavia, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I thought this was a mesmerising book. I didn't realise when I started to read it that it's based on actual events, Agnes was the last woman to be executed in Iceland. The book has been compared to Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. I can see the comparison but I found Atwood's novel dull and Burial Rites quite the opposite. The book is narrated by different characters and it's not always clear when the POV changes so this took a while to get used to. I fell totally in love with this book, the characters, the setting and everything that happens. Agnes's tragic tale stabbed a dagger into my heart.
