Hannah Kent’s very first novel, Burial Rites, is a stunning bestseller. The novel has already racked up nominations for various awards including the Guardian First Book Award. Burial Rites tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last Icelandic woman to be executed in Iceland for the murder of two men in the 1830s. Kent’s novel delves deep into the mysterious circumstances that led to the murders. It examines the life and motives of Agnes through exhaustive factual considerations. Kent has garnered quite the fan-following since her debut novel. Her book is a regular fixture at book clubs across the globe. How does someone from laidback, sunny, south Australia get drawn to tell the story of a woman who lived halfway across the world in a less than favourable era? The talented young writer spoke to me on the phone from her Melbourne home, a day before flying into Canada for the Writer’s Fest in Vancouver. In the sweetest Aussie accent, Hannah told me everything about Burial Rites and about her all consuming love for writing.
You have achieved a lot of success with Burial Rites. The novel has been shortlisted for many prestigious awards. How are you dealing with the spotlight?
It has been extraordinary. Everything that has happened has been beyond the wildest dreams that I entertained when I was a writing student at University. My goal for a long time was to have a book published before I was 30. Even now I am still pinching myself about it. It is a really strange experience. It can be really disorientating. As much as I have enjoyed it and am grateful for it, it has meant that my life has changed in ways that I did not anticipate. Now I write full-time which is wonderful and another dream come true. But it has also meant that my relationship to writing has changed a little bit now. I am working on a second book now and it has been difficult to block out all the white noise from the previous one. At the end of the day I write because I love it. I never started writing because I wanted to win awards. I write because I always had this abiding, enduring love for writing and I think I found my way back to that place now. As long as I operate out of that sincerity and genuine love for what I do, then no matter what happens, success or failure, I won’t go too far astray.
Now that expectations are higher for your second novel, after the immense success of the first, are they motivating for you?
I wouldn’t necessarily say they are my primary motivation. It wouldn’t help me to concentrate on outdoing the previous book. That would be distracting and it would take away from the storytelling. At the moment I am trying to block all of that out and write as though I am just writing for one reader. And that is myself! I would be lying if I said I don’t feel any pressure. Of course I do! I have to be realistic and ignore it as much as possible and just get on with the job. Some people might not like the second book as much as the first. Other people might like it more. Every book is different. I just have to do it and not worry too much about how people will respond to it.
What was it about Agnes, your protagonist in Burial Rites, that struck a chord with you? Were you looking to understand the difference between good and evil? Or the dangers of being misunderstood? Or perhaps the helplessness of being disadvantaged?
I was attracted to the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir before I had any intention of writing about her. I was fascinated by her character. This woman was painted in such unequivocal light. She was spoken about in blank stereotypes, as evil and wicked. A woman who had operated out of an inherent quality of evil. That did not sit well with me. I found it very troubling. Women are not one thing or another. Angels or devils, as you say. I wanted to know more about the human behind the story. The story is historical and has transformed into myth and legend.
When I decided I was going to write the book I realised how much was unexplored about this woman’s life. So much was missing from historical records. I settled down to do the research for about two years full time. I had a desire to address the silences about Agnes. Her gender, her extreme poverty and her relative isolation in the community, when kinship meant so much, were all hugely relevant to the trajectory of her fate. I wanted to bring that back up into the light. That was a major motivation. I was frustrated and outraged at the way history always reduces women to these one-dimensional tropes. That outrage along with the fascination with the time period, the desire to look at the external circumstances and the character of this woman, were all motivations.
Burial Rites is set in the enigmatic countryside of Iceland. Can you tell us why Iceland captured your imagination enough to choose it as the home for your first novel instead of, say Australia?
It was not so much about deciding on a setting or deciding on a country. This was the story that I really wanted to tell and it happened to be set in Iceland. Because it was, and is very much, an Icelandic story, I couldn’t have simply transplanted it into another setting, like in 19th century rural Australia, for example. I wanted to honour all the facts as could be corroborated. It would also be remiss of me not to mention that I love Iceland. I spent a year there when I was seventeen as an exchange student and I fell completely in love with the extraordinary country. It really got under my skin. I have been back about six or seven times now. I still feel homesick for it. In a way it wasn’t such an exotic setting for me to write my first book in. There was a familiarity there. I mention in the author’s note that the book is a love letter to Iceland and to its extraordinary landscape, which I have a great fondness and affection for.
You will be doing a talk at the Writer’s Fest called “Icelandic Incantations”. Can you tell us more about it?
Yes! I am going to be speaking alongside Yrsa Sigurðardóttir who is a wonderful Icelandic crime writer. We are both going to be reading from our books and talking about the inspirations behind them, and about our preoccupations with what we wanted to explore. I will be more talking about Burial Rites, about the strange stories behind it, the real story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir and about the peculiar way that I came to be interested in this woman on the other side of the world. Then we will talk about Iceland itself, the extraordinary place that it is, the way it shapes people and the way it shapes destinies. The way it lends itself to these strange slightly spooky stories!
You are also talking at an event called “Raw Material”.
I am going to be talking there with Beth Powning who is an author and Sara Tilley as well. We are going to be talking about our fascination with historical records and research. We will also talk about the ways in which historical fiction writers take all this data and render it into something that is enjoyable but also has elements of humility. That is a process I am still interested in and we will have a lot to discuss. Such as, what are our obligations to history as historical fiction writers? How can you take a bunch of letters and old books, and turn them into a reader experience that is sensory and immediate? That should be a lot of fun!
A lot of research went into Burial Rites. How did you manage to insert yourself into the existing story? Was it difficult to get the Icelandic culture, lifestyle and mannerisms right? Those too of a long time ago?
It took me two years of full time research before I even sat down to do the first draft. I was lucky in many ways. Like I mentioned I lived in Iceland for a year when I was seventeen. It was during that year that I learned the language. I am a bit rusty now. I learned enough to get by. But still, contemporary Icelandic is very different from 1830s Icelandic. During my time in Iceland I was assisted by my university. They gave me travel grants. I got to go to Iceland and I spent a lot of time in the national archives. I was going through census records, finding Agnus in priest books, finding records of her confirmation and her birth. I travelled around the same valley that she lived and worked in. A lot of the farms in the book are still working farms to this day. They haven’t changed names. That was really useful. There was a lot of translation involved as well, which is really laborious. I did a lot of reading. From old travel journals by Scottish evangelists in the 1800s, to really dry academic articles about methods of sheep grazing. You just have to cover all bases. So a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, a lot of translation. I think you have to be a history buff or a history nerd to enjoy this sort of thing,
What inspired you to become a writer?
Writing is something that I have always loved. I have been very fortunate to know what I love to do. I can remember the first short story I wrote when I was six. I was a precocious reader. Growing up I was always going to be an author and something else, because my parents wisely told me to not put all my eggs in one basket. So I was going to be an author and a ballet dancer or an author and a bricklayer. That didn’t change. I always wanted to be an author and something. Now I get to just be an author for the time being which is great!
What is a typical day of writing like for you? Do you have rituals? A special place where you like to write?
If I am in the research phase of a novel, it tends to be a little more haphazard, depending on whether I need to go to libraries to look up books. If I am reading I tend to be more out and about. I like to research in public places. I like libraries. When I get down to writing, which I am now for this next book, I become a recluse. I prefer to write from home. I have a little study at home. I get to have my books and things at hand that way. I also read aloud a lot when I write. If I do that in a café or library I get a few strange looks so I isolate myself and write from home instead. I try to keep regular hours like any other job. I prefer to be at my desk by 8 o’clock in the morning. I generally write first thing in the morning. You are less burdened by all the other administration of the day then. I tend to write through to about 1 o’clock, when things start to dry up. Then I spend the rest of the day answering emails and maybe a little bit of editing. I drink too much coffee when I write. That is probably my ritual!
You are a very young writer. Does it become difficult to be taken seriously?
No, I don’t think so actually. I have never experienced any ageism personally. I think sometimes your age becomes a factor in discussions about your work but not in a negative way. I don’t think it necessarily impacts the way people read my work. No one has been patronising or condescending. I am not that young as well! People come out with books far younger than I do. I have been writing for a very long time. I am 30 now and I wake up pretty tired in the morning!
Were you worried about being pigeonholed into the genre of “Women’s Fiction”, having a female protagonist and being a female writer?
I don’t think I have experienced that any more than other female writers. Not speaking personally, but I think there definitely is a bias towards female writers. You see it in the statistics. The Miles Franklin, our largest literary prize here in Australia, was dominated by men for several years in a row. It seemed to exclude women and people were questioning that. So in response, a prize called The Stella Prize was established. Every year The Stella committee collects data like who is reviewed in the national broadsheets, by whom, how many people are published etc. There is a market dominance by male writers, for sure. It is not deliberate. It is just the general attitude towards women in the workplace. Because of this, editors are now trying to commission more work from women. They are trying to feature women’s books more. They are trying to have men review them as well as women.
The only thing I have noticed, in terms of my gender when discussing this book, is that people have made assumptions that I wrote this book to be political in terms of feminism. They think I wanted Burial Rites to be a feminist manifesto and that I am using Agnes’ story to push my own feminist agenda. Which is really silly because that is not it at all. Of course I am a feminist. I believe in the equality between sexes. A very important external factor that shaped Agnes’ life was her poverty. I am always so interested to see people bring up the gender aspect and very rarely bring up the class aspect. That is something interesting I have noticed.
What do you enjoy and not enjoy about writing?
There are lots of things I love about writing. I actually really love editing. I find it cathartic and fulfilling. The thing I enjoy least would probably be the first draft stage. That is when what you have on the page and what is in your head are most out of line. It is difficult to bring what is in your imagination onto the page. I find that I can only do that through rewriting and through editing. It is just fighting that blank page. That is always a difficulty.
Your descriptions, especially of the landscapes, are fresh and beautiful. How do you find these new words and new ways of looking at the world? How do you stay inspired?
I wanted to be a poet more than I wanted to be a novelist. In fact, Burial Rites began in its very, very, very early days as a verse novel. It was not going to be prose. A lot of the original poems have snuck into the prose. I am a big admirer of writers like Margaret Atwood and Janet Frames. You can always tell in their writing that they are poets because they have this fantastic way of making language new, unfamiliar, refreshing and memorable. That is something I really admire. I also admire a poet’s way of concision. Poets are able to inject a small number of words with such emotion and with such depth of meaning. I try to do in my own books but I think I have a long way to go.
What would you tell young writers who are looking at an uncertain future with very little rewards?
I would say writing is its own reward. The process of writing should be what drives you. What happens next is not as relevant if writing is what you get the most enjoyment from. There is so much discussion right now on the future of publishing, of books, of writers and of Amazon. It is really important at the end of the day to remind yourself that this is something that you love to do. And you should do it for that love alone. I don’t think you will run into any problems! But also keep in mind that reading is very subjective. If someone does not like your work then perhaps they are not the right reader or perhaps you need to keep rewriting. I have only written the one book so I am not in a position to give a whole lot of advice!
What can we expect from your next novel?
It is still in its draft stage. It will probably change a lot before it hits the press. It is another historical novel. Again based on a true story. Something which I came across when researching the first book. I was reading a lot of old newspapers then and I came across this account of a child in Ireland, which I thought was quite extraordinary. Without saying too much, it is set in the south west of Ireland, in the 1820s, before the famine. It has a lot to do with superstition and folklore. Things that I am really interested in! With the first book I wrote a first draft and did a lot of rewriting afterwards. With this one I wrote it and edited it together as I went along. But it is not yet finished! I hope to finish it very soon. Hopefully before the end of the year.
To attend the events Hannah will be speaking at and to check out the other fun stuff going on at the Writer’s Fest please visit their website.
-Prachi Kamble