Review: Burial Rites

Unlike the majority, I read The Good People before I read Burial Rites. I have a rebellious streak, and when I’m bombarded by folk telling me I must read a book, I don’t!
So I’ve come to this book well after the majority. Burial Rites is a stunner! It’s hard to comprehend that this is Hannah Kent’s first novel. It’s structure, and language, are so sophisticated and polished. And yes, everyone was right, I loved it and should have read it ages ago!

So I’m no going to give a synopsis or analyse the structure - it’s all been said before. However, I am going to share some of my favourite similes and metaphors that Kent uses. Hannah Kent is a master of them both:

*Autumn fell upon the valley like a gasp.
*The light had arrived like a hunted thing, all wide-eyed and trembling.
*I feel drunk with summer and sunlight. I want to seize fistfuls of sky and eat them.
But soon winter will come like a freak wave upon the shore.
….my heart flutters like a bird held fast in the fist.
*My tongue feels so tired; it slumps in my mouth like a dead bird, all damp feathers; in between the stones of my teeth.
*The dark comes; it has settled down in these parts like a bruise in the flesh of the earth.
*Snow lay over the valley like linen, like a shroud waiting for the dead body of sky that slumped overhead.

See what I mean?
This novel will break your heart.

• Review
• Hannah Kent