The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea, set in Iceland in 1686, has a dark atmosphere, saturated in sadness, fear and superstition, a story of suspicion, love and violence. The story takes places over just a few months from August to December. It begins in November 1686 as a body surfaces from the ice-crusted sea, a body that had been weighted down with stones. But the land in Iceland is never still and the stones had been dislodged, pushing the body upwards and breaking the ice above.
And then the story steps back a few months to August 1686 as Rósa is sent to the remote village of Stykkishólmur to join her new husband, Jón Eiríksson, a rich fisherman, farmer and merchant, and the chieftain. In other words a powerful man. He and Rosa had met when he had been travelling south and although his wife, Anna, had only been dead for two months he had proposed to Rosa. She accepted him, not because she loved him but to save her mother from starvation. Jon gives her a small glass figurine, shaped in the perfect form of a woman, hands clasped and her gaze meekly lowered, as a wedding present. He said it reminded him of her.
And a few months later accompanied by Petur, his apprentice, she travels to Stykkishólmur. Petur is reputed to be one of the
huldufolk – one of the ‘hidden people’ or elves, who take people and feast on their souls. (Icelandic works are used throughout the book and there is a short glossary at the end of the book, which I didn’t find until I finished the book.) He warns her not to ask questions about Anna, not to him or the villagers and especially not to Jon. As they near the village Rosa becomes suspicious and fearful, especially as strangers they meet warn her that Jon may look honest but underneath he is a devil.
Her fears only increase as she finds she is isolated in a croft apart from the other villagers, who shun her with the exception of one woman, Katrin, who offers to help her. Jon forbids her to enter the locked room in the loft or the outbuildings, which of course rouses her curiosity. He expects her to obey him and occupy herself in the croft – to be subservient, like the glass woman. So, Rosa obediently went through her daily tasks. There was an old belief that reading and writing could be a form of witchcraft and Rosa’s mother, who knows Rosa is too wilful to be a wife, had warned her that Jon would set fire to her feet if she wrote a single word. So Rosa, who loves the Sagas, hid her writing from Jon. Then, hearing strange noises in the loft, she is irresistibly drawn to investigate and the tension rises, slowly mounting to violence as the book progresses.
I had high hopes that I would love
The Glass Woman, but my hopes dwindled as I read on. I thought it was too long, too drawn out and slow, especially in the first half of the book. The structure of the story let it down for me and there are parts of the story I thought were a bit too predictable. The action takes place over just a few months – from August to December – and the narrative switches backwards and forwards over these months, between Rosa in the third person and Jon in the first person which I found rather disjointed and awkward having to work out what happened when. The pace did pick up towards the end of the book, though, as the violence reaches its climax.
I liked the setting in Iceland and the historical context. Caroline Lea explains in her author’s note at the end of the book that as she immersed herself in Jon and Rosa’s world she found the landscape itself was becoming a character. I can see what she means – the landscape does play a large part in the story and I liked her descriptions of its changing nature as earthquakes engulf whole hills, the land falling away or rising up. She was also fascinated by the Sagas with their references to the supernatural and that comes across strongly too.
The questions, however kept my interest – what had happened to Anna, what is in the locked room, and why does Jon want to keep Rosa away from the village? And what about the body that emerges from ice – how does that fit into the story? Overall, then I did enjoy this book.
My thanks to the publishers, Penguin UK Michael Joseph, for my review copy via NetGalley.
This is my first book for the
What’s In a Name? challenge – a book with the word ‘woman’ in the title, for the
When Are You Reading? challenge, the
Calendar of Crime challenge and the
Mount TBR challenge too.
Poisoned Pen Press|4 September 2018 |227 pages|e-book |Review copy|5*
This edition, published in association with the British Library, has an introduction by Martin Edwards. It was first published in 1934 by Hamish Hamilton. It was Richard Hull’s first novel. His real name was Richard Henry Sampson (1896 – 1973) and up until 1934 he had worked as a chartered accountant. With the success of The Murder of My Aunt he devoted himself to writing.
The Murder of My Aunt is one of the best of the classic crime fiction novels from the Golden Age that I’ve read. On the face of it has a straightforward plot as Edward Powell, the narrator for most of the book, plots to murder his Aunt Mildred. They live in a house called Brynmawr on the outskirts of the Welsh town of Llwll. Mildred is his guardian, his parents having died in mysterious circumstances when Edward was very young. He detests living in Lwll and he also detests his aunt. It’s a contest of wills as Mildred finds Edward a great trial, she sees all his faults – he is selfish, self-centred, vain and lazy and foppishly effeminate – and she constantly nags him to change his ways, or she will ‘have to take action’. Edward, though decides that he will take action, thinking his life would be so much better without Mildred and he sets out to find a way to arrange her death so that no suspicion will fall on him. He makes copious notes of various methods and the steps he plans to take and that’s more difficult than he expected as his attempts keep failing.
But it’s the writing that lifts this book from the ordinary to an original and funny murder mystery and, whilst not laugh-out-loud funny, I thought it was brilliant. It’s witty and ironic from the start as Edward pontificates on the pronunciation of the word ‘Lwll’. Neither Edward nor Mildred come across as caricatures, but as real people, both of them with their own faults. Edward is just so insufferably awful that I felt on Mildred’s side in their battle of wits, even though she shows him up in front of the whole village – and after all she had brought him up.
Once I started to read The Murder of My Aunt I was captivated and I had to read it quickly, anxious to find out if Edward did manage to kill his aunt. It makes very entertaining reading and I loved the ending, which took me by surprise and I thought was so clever – definitely a 5* read for me!
Now I’m looking forward to reading more of Richard Hull’s books and have Excellent Intentions lined up to read soon.
My thanks to the publishers, Poisoned Pen Press, for my review copy via NetGalley.
This is qualifies for the Mount TBR Challenge and for the Calendar of Crime Challenge for March in the category of a book in which money/fortune/inheritance has a major role.
Blurb
When Yu-jin wakes up covered in blood, and finds the body of his mother downstairs, he decides to hide the evidence and pursue the killer himself.
Then young women start disappearing in his South Korean town. Who is he hunting? And why does the answer take him back to his brother and father who lost their lives many years ago.
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