Please excuse my gentle weeping as I type out this review, but this was a book so beautiful in all the saddest ways.
Burial Rites is historical fiction, based on the true Icelandic story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, who in the late 1820s was convicted of murder, and executed.
With its foregone conclusion, there is not so much a plot to this book as a desolate path that leads to the sea. We know where we are going, and we know what we will find when we get there, but still we follow its slopes and steeps, letting the salt strip our skin for as long as it takes to reach the water.
They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.
The novel covers a short space of time – the short months between Agnes’ sentencing and the execution. Not much happens. Whilst the formalities take place and preparations are made, Agnes is sent to live with a District Officer and his family. She and her spiritual advisor, Tóti, wait for the date of the execution to be announced.
Burial Rites may not have much of a plot, but it does not need one, because it has such an overwhelming atmosphere. The harsh landscape and its weathers are more summoned than evoked, and Agnes’ voice is as a clear and deep as an autumn pool. The writing sings with her life, and all of its pain.
It had been a particularly vivid bruise upon her chin that had disturbed him the most. A ripe, yellow colour, like dried egg yolk. Tóti wondered at the force that might have birthed it. The rough hand of a man, gripping her under the throat. A rope binding her to fetters. A fall.
I do not think I have ever read a book that better handles the graft and grime of the unfortunate peasantry, whilst delving into the humanity of a harder, harsher world. I think it will be a long time before I read another book which provokes so much feeling in me.
I loved it. I loved all the characters, their prejudices and love. The unique friendship that develops between Agnes and Tóti is complex and redemptive (if indeed Agnes needs any forgiving), and contributes to this novel’s purity – I can think of no better word.
It is dirty and awful and unrelenting in its violence, but somehow this book is also as crisp as new-laid snow. As a posthumous gesture of kindness to the unhappy woman whose life was so brutally taken, I do believe this novel stands. As a read, I cannot do more than recommend it, which I most sincerely do.
And I close my eyes and I imagine the valley in the long days of summer, the sun warming the bones of the earth until the swans flock to the lake, and the clouds lifting to reveal the height of the sky: bright, bright blue, so bright you could weep.
Darker Fables 