The Good People - Hannah Kent

The Good People is, like Burial Rites, a thoroughly engrossing entrée into the macabre nature of a vanished society, its virtues and its follies and its lethal impulses.  The Good People takes us straight to a place utterly unexpected and believable, where amidst the earnest mayhem people impose on each other, there is no patronizing quaintness, but a compelling sense of the inevitability of solemn horrors.

Kent conjures up with exceptional intensity and empathy a world in which folk beliefs hold as much sway over people’s minds as religious faith…  It would have been all too easy to present this story as a conflict between rational enlightenment and peasant superstition, but the main strength of Kent’s narrative is that it avoids such a simple dichotomy.  ‘I have told you my truth,’ Nance tells the court during the trial scenes that provide the book’s climax.  Such is the power of Kent’s imaginative sympathy with her characters that this becomes not merely the mantra of a deluded old woman, but a moving statement of her continuing faith in her own vision of the way the world works…  The Good People is an even better novel than Burial Rites – a starkly realised tale of love, grief and misconceived beliefs

Lyrical and unsettling, The Good People is a vivid account of the contradictions of life in rural Ireland in the 19th century.  A literary novel with the pace and tension of a thriller, Hannah Kent takes us on a frightening journey towards an unspeakable tragedy.  I am in awe of Kent’s gifts as a storyteller.