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NZ Herald
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Book of the day: Always Homes, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent
It's necessary to summarise this memoir in some detail, because its slowly cohering narrative is its essence. It's the back story of Aussie Hannah Kent's deservedly acclaimed first novel, Burial Rites. A bit over two decades ago, the teenaged Kent flew to Iceland as an exchange student. She found herself
ABC News
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Ghost stories and executions in Iceland — when Hannah Kent and Agnes Magnusdottir became entwined
Hannah Kent's arrival in Iceland as a high school exchange student in 2003 was a difficult one. On her first night in the country, she found herself stranded late at night at Keflavik Airport and desperately homesick. But within weeks, Iceland had begun to change young Hannah — its dramatic landscapes, extraordinary light and chilling ghost stories embedded themselves in Hannah's psyche. She became particularly entranced with the haunting story of accused murderer and domestic servant, Agnes Magnusdottir, who became the last person executed in Iceland. Hannah's later novel, Burial Rites, was inspired by Agnes' story and became a best-seller. But there were many unsolvable mysteries that lingered in her mind years after that book was released. Hannah returned to Iceland to find answers, and discovered her life was still entwined with Agnes in strange and eerie ways. Further information This episode of Conversations was recorded live at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival. Always Home, Always Homesick is published by Pan Macmillan
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent review – absorbing memoir brings Iceland to life
The first part of Hannah Kent's memoir Always Home, Always Homesick spans the award-winning author's early childhood in Adelaide through to her first trip to Iceland as a 17-year-old Rotary exchange student, in 2003. Aged four, Hannah is friendless, 'illiterate in a common tongue of childhood'. In books, she finds refuge and relief. As a teenager, she is annoyed by adults' talk of Atars, harbouring a grander aspiration: to awaken to the 'divine mystery' of the world. The promotional material for Always Home, Always Homesick frames Iceland as Kent's muse, spurring not only her award-winning debut Burial Rites but also the literary practice that spawned subsequent novels The Good People and Devotion. And indeed, the place feels personified in this memoir. As though she were falling for a full-blooded human, the young Kent progresses from initial awkwardness in her new surrounds to physical infatuation, 'euphoric sublimation' to its beauty, and eventually, a kind of enmeshment: 'My bones have knitted with this place.' Returning to Australia, she is beset by longing and grief. Inseparable from Kent's enchantment with Iceland is her own artistic blossoming, making this first section of the memoir read like a Künstlerroman. Encouraged by a kindly teacher in Sauðárkrókur (the small northern town where she has been posted), she scrawls poems in class and the act gives her a 'physical rush'. Writing, she says, is her 'calling', and 'feels like prayer'. There are frequent moments of epiphany, brought about through contact with the natural world – horse-riding, gathering berries, lying against the snow. Facing an aurora-rippled sky, she writes: 'I long to fit these swerving arcs of brilliant green … into language.' For it is only through writing that Kent can attempt to 'articulate the hold' Iceland has on her. The second part of the memoir sees Kent return to Iceland in her 20s, with a sharpening resolve to research and write about Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in that country, in 1830. On the face of it, the figure of Agnes is at great remove from Kent; even if she weren't, a writer writing about their own writing process could risk alienating the general reader. But Kent's gift is to bridge these apparent distances. As with Agnes' voice in Burial Rites, Kent's narration here is immediate, intimate and never less than captivating. For a description of an extended, conceptual process, Kent's account feels startlingly physical. She visits the kinds of dwellings Agnes would have inhabited; she finds examples of objects – axes, needles, butter churns – that will make her book 'as real as possible'; she gathers stories directly from farmers in their cow stalls; she handles original letters at the national archives and carries out her own translations. She applies what she has learned experientially in her exchange year – about family, and land, and isolation – to illuminate Agnes' story. This behind-the-scenes view of the artist at work is interesting in its own right, but especially fascinating is Kent's personal closeness to the historical figure of Agnes, who has a 'continued, humming hold' over her. At times, Kent's feelings drift into identification, but this is done with careful understatement. Discovering that Agnes spent her final six months with a local family, for example, Kent draws a parallel to being placed with a host family: 'I know it is not the same, but I know a little of what it is like to be alone among others … to be placed with strangers.' Following Burial Rites' publication in 2013, Kent gained access to court documents associated with a mock retrial of Agnes' case. She was struck by how close her invented details were to these transcripts, and surely this is testament to the author's imaginative and empathetic powers. Australian authors waxing lyrical about foreign locations can often lapse into idealisation. But when Kent describes Iceland as her true home, and says she finds it easier to be herself there, these feel like genuine, hard-won truths. Thanks to her gradual acculturation as a high-school student, she is fluent in Icelandic and counts various locals as family. There is a decidedly Romantic bent to Kent's writing – a lyrical treatment of nature; frequent reference to the liminal. But this is in keeping with her highly sensitive disposition as well as Icelanders' own interest in the mythic and the uncanny. As a novelist, Kent is interested in 'what is unsaid', and this too chimes with something in the Icelandic psyche and its 'tradition of silence'. On her most recent trip to Iceland, captured in the third and final part of the memoir, Kent visits the site of Agnes' execution, which has been made into a memorial. She is moved to find plaques lining the pathway engraved with lines from her novel. It's a beautiful scene, with a strange symmetry: an imprinting of the author's own imaginative spirit on to a place which has so deeply imprinted itself on her. Always Home, Always Homesick is an absorbing memoir that will appeal to existing readers of Kent's work, and will undoubtedly see new ones seek out her earlier writing in all its mystery and glory. Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent is out through Pan Macmillan Australia ($36.99)
The Guardian
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Literary scandal', ‘joke-a-minute', ‘captivating': the best Australian books out in May
Fiction, Simon & Schuster, $34.99 This debut novel luxuriates in the lies it weaves. Dominic Amerena is a confident storyteller, jumping between the novel's two narrators with ease. One, a down-on-his-luck writer searching for a story. The other, a reclusive Australian novelist who disappeared from the public eye at the height of her career. When he recognises her at a local pool, he knows that if he can convince her to tell him the story of her brilliant, controversial work, it will be his one-way ticket to success. Literary scandal, feminist fury, love, betrayal – I Want Everything has it all and then some. – Bec Kavanagh Memoir, Picador, $17.99 Hannah Kent's newest work of memoir charts her Adelaide childhood, her first trip to Iceland as a 17-year-old Rotary exchange student, and her ensuing enchantment with the country, inseparable from her own artistic blossoming. The behind-the-scenes view of the creative processes that led to her award-winning 2013 novel, Burial Rites, is interesting reading in its own right, but especially moving is Kent's palpable tenderness towards the novel's subject – Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland. As with Agnes' voice in Burial Rites, Kent's narration is immediate, intimate, and never less than captivating. – Adele Dumont Fiction, UQP, $32.99 It's 1910: Florence Nightingale is 90 years old and on her deathbed, restlessly floating through dreams and memories. A mysterious young man, Silas Bradley, arrives at her bedside, claiming that they have met many times – in Crimea, Turkey and Scutari. But he's too young to have been there half a century ago, and a fearful Nightingale suspects he's hiding his true purpose. What follows is historical fiction that draws on the details of Nightingale's life both before and after she became the founder of modern nursing. Laura Elvery writes with a lyrical and elegiac voice, lovely and elegant in its restraint; a very atmospheric read. – Sian Cain Memoir, Allen & Unwin, $34.99 Food journalist Candice Chung's debut begins with a prologue that's more like a poem: 'What can I get you? And is everything OK? … Here – let me take these things away. At the restaurant, we hear all the things we want our lovers to say.' After Chung's 13-year relationship ends, she starts dating again – not just men but also her Cantonese parents, whom she reconnects with after a 'decade-long rupture', bringing them along to the restaurants she critiques. A thoughtful and compelling pastiche of fragments, lists, and literary reflections, Chung's memoir revolves around her personal history with food, family and culture, but also around writing: Deborah Levy, Nora Ephron, Helen Garner and Craig Claiborne are all name-checked, and their influence is felt throughout. – Steph Harmon Non-fiction, ABC Books, $34.99 This is not the war book John Lyons and Sophie de Clezio expected to write. On two trips to Ukraine as the ABC's global affairs editor, Lyons – the author of Balcony over Jerusalem – serviced the grind of breaking news. On his third trip – taken during his holidays with his photographer partner, de Clezio – there was time to find the real Ukraine at war, via its citizens. In this way, A Bunker in Kyiv is a tribute to the millions of Ukrainians who, as Lyons writes, wake each day with the credo: 'What can I do for the war effort today?' While it still maps the geopolitical elements of the three-year-old war – and the introduction of the new X factor, Trump - this story belongs to the extraordinary people of Ukraine, standing strong against an uncertain future. - Lucy Clark Non-fiction, Penguin, $36.99 Both authors of Broken Brains – who were my colleagues at Mamamia 12 years ago – have lived through incredibly difficult illnesses. This can make for tough reading at times, but Jamila Rizvi and Rosie Waterland's accounts of sickness, physical and mental, serve a purpose beyond gawking. The book contrasts Rizvi's experience with a rare brain tumour to Waterland's complex mental health issues to argue that the body-mind distinction is neither fair nor accurate. Waterland no more chose her traumatic childhood than Rizvi did her tumour. Mixing memoir with reporting, the book highlights gaps in Australia's healthcare system and offers patients and their carers new possibilities for navigating illness. – Alyx Gorman Fiction, Ultimo, $34.99 Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion I just loved Cadance Bell's memoir The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody when it was released back in 2022; a humorous and moving account of growing up trans in rural New South Wales. 'I suspect we'll read a lot more from her,' I wrote then – and here is some more: an impressively ambitious left turn into science fiction. This heartfelt novel opens as a robot, Arto, wakes to find himself alone in a desolate future Australia, humanity seemingly long gone. He sets out to discover what has happened, his only company a cat and a certain movie star called 'Huge Jacked Man' whose adverts are still playing in the empty streets. Arto eventually stumbles on another robot, Indi, who may be his sister – and the reason Earth has been obliterated. - SC Fiction, Macmillan, $34.99 A group holiday goes terribly awry when an adult man is accused of groping a teenage girl. While this premise might sound a bit like The Slap, He Would Never is as much a bad man thriller as it is a multi-family drama. Wainwright's fifth novel centres on five women who met at a mother's group 14 years earlier, for whom camping has become an annual tradition. The book jumps between perspectives and time periods at a page-turning pace, and as the dynamics leading up to the incident unfold, the stakes of its aftermath get higher. That the book scored an endorsement from Liane Moriarty is fitting – it mines similar veins to Moriarty's work, with an echoing dramatic conclusion. – AG Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $34.99 Better known for his work on TV and main stages, Toby Schmitz's witty and fast-paced debut novel is tricky to summarise. A social satire set in the roaring 20s, a murder mystery on board a luxury ocean liner, and a book partly narrated by a fairly smug boat. On board is a smorgasbord of upper-class caricatures, which Schmitz absolutely revels in: landed gentry, socialites and social climbers, drowning in cognac, snappy retorts and horrifying racism. They're too caught up in themselves to much mind about the gruesome death of a Bengali deckhand – but the ship's detective is useless, and more bodies are piling up… – SH Memoir, UNSW, $34.99 In the opening chapters of this lyrical, trans-generational memoir, Micaela Sahhar poses a question: 'How do you tell a story you are reaching to understand?' The dilemma animates the rest of the book about her family, who were displaced by the Nakba in 1948 and resettled in far-flung corners of the world, including Melbourne and Adelaide. In dense but beautiful prose, Sahhar pulls together a story, full of gaps and questions, about her Palestinian family, their memories and their connection to home. – Celina Ribeiro Fiction, Pantera, $34.99 We open on a great misfortune. Ellie has just won a major painting prize, which means two things: more eyes than ever are fixed on her career, and she now has to carry a giant novelty check all night. The art world feels increasingly vampiric, her agent is breathing down her neck, and everything feels too much. Can you blame her for embarking on the deranged project that gives this book its title? In his hilarious debut, occasional Guardian contributor Joseph Earp (who moonlights as a painter himself) probes the pains of love and art. It's a joke-a-minute novel that captures the mannered rituals of any inner-city creative scene with stunning wit – and scathing accuracy. – Michael Sun Cookbook, Murdoch Books, $55 Chef Thi Le named her first cookbook after a term that refers to the Vietnamese diaspora. For Le, who was born in a Malaysian refugee camp and grew up in western Sydney, she is leaning into the experience of living between worlds by sharing 100-plus recipes that explore Vietnamese flavours and techniques. She celebrates Australian produce and US and Cajun influences in a spicy seafood boil-up; Cambodian rice noodles in her Phnom Penh egg noodles recipe; and French colonial history in her coconut flan. She wrote the book with her partner, Jia-Yen Lee, who also co-owns Le's celebrated Melbourne venues Anchovy, Ca Com and Jeow. – Emma Joyce
The Age
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Inconvenient women', mortality and a controversial work by Joan Didion: 13 new books to delve into
So here we are, going into the last month of autumn and if you're one of those people getting ready to hunker down in the impending cooler weather then there are plenty of new books for you to stock up on. Memoirs, fiction, science, even a controversial posthumous publication − so much to feast on. No wonder May is named after Maia, the Roman goddess for fertility and growth. Always Home, Always Homesick Hannah Kent Picador, $36.99 April 29 Burial Rites, about the last woman executed in Iceland, was one of those books that captured the imagination of readers when it was published in 2013. Now Hannah Kent has written a lovely memoir about the curious path she took to becoming a writer − an exchange program took her as a 17-year-old to Iceland, a country she chose because she had never seen snow. She had the luck, she writes, to be born into a story-loving family and with that legacy has written three novels and now this tender account of how Iceland captivated her and forged her literary career. Desire Paths Megan Clement Ultimo, $36.99 April 29 In her introduction, Megan Clement, who has lived in Australia, France, England and Zimbabwe, writes that 2020 was the year when 'grief' and 'trauma' were dropped into the cultural mainstream. In the course of this touching and carefully constructed memoir of dealing with the stringencies of the Melbourne lockdowns and the impending death of her terminally ill father, she also considers the nature of home, belonging and the meaning and realities of borders. Little World Josephine Rowe Black Inc., $27.99 April 29 Orrin Bird has been left an unusual bequest − the incorruptible body of a saint in a box made of canoe wood. (Remember the saint in Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional?) The saint was young when thought to have died brutally, but her mind is still active, 'time breaking contract with her body' and 'death has brought very little in the way of answers'. In clear prose, this short, idiosyncratic novel brings us the people with whom the little saint 'travels' through time and landscape, her response to their predicaments and her reflections on her own existence. A remarkable concoction. Everything Lost, Everything Found Matthew Hooton HarperCollins, $34.99 April 30 What was it Faulkner said? 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.' The revisiting of earlier events occurs in many novels, and does so again in Matthew Hooton's much-admired third. Jack is 12 years old when his mother is mauled by a croc in the Tapajos River in Brazil. Many years later, Jack, by now a grandfather, recognises he doesn't 'have infinite time to curate my own past' as his wife Gracie 'slips into ever longer states of forgetting'. But how can he come to terms with the past and his present? Lonely Mouth Jacqueline Maley Fourth Estate, $34.99 April 30 The first novel by Jacqueline Maley, columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, became a bestseller. Her second opens with a paragraph that leaps off the page and plunges you into the story of Matilda, a fry chef at posh Sydney restaurant Bocca, her younger half-sister Lara, a model who lives in Paris, and their flighty mum, Barbara. When Lara's father, the decidedly dodgy actor Angus, reappears in their lives, any sort of equilibrium goes up in smoke. It's hard to put down. Notes to John Joan Didion Fourth Estate, $34.99 April 30 This book is slightly problematic. You wonder whether its author − were she still alive − would have approved of its publication. Joan Didion wrote the adored Year of Magical Thinking, about the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. This posthumous book consists of notes addressed to him reporting on sessions with her psychiatrist, and reveals frank comments about their adopted daughter Quintana, alcoholism, depression and much more. If you love Didion, you'll probably want to read this. I Want Everything Dominic Amerena Summit Books, $34.99 April 30 'I acted immorally, but what did literature have to do with morality?' asks the would-be literary star − 'a style machine with no substance' − early in this absorbing novel about truth and ambition. The unnamed narrator stumbles on a controversial, reclusive author − 'sharply chiselled cheekbones, like the bust of a deposed dictator' − and proceeds to try to find out why she disappeared from the public eye. But to woo Brenda's trust, he tells a porky or three, and she might just be leading him on for her own purposes. All will be revealed in Dominic Amerena's delicious debut. The Opposite of Lonely Hilde Hinton Hachette, $32.99 April 30 The world takes its toll and Rose is well aware of that. Somehow, she seems to have shaken off friends, her father has died, her husband is no longer her husband and even her young son Max is trying her patience more than usual. After a near disaster while out shopping, a knight in shining armour comes to the rescue; Ellie, who becomes her new bestie. Loneliness is a curse at the best of times, so a friend indeed for a friend in need is a good thing … usually. Hilde Hinton has written another gentle and perceptive look at the travails of life. Vaccine Nation Raina MacIntyre NewSouth, $34.99 May 1 Biosecurity expert Raina MacIntyre's latest book is a lament at the rise since 2020 of health disinformation and a plea to understand the value of vaccinations given the sad inevitability of a new pandemic. She points out that flu vaccinations in Australia in the over 65s are at 60 per cent, whereas only a few years ago, 70 per cent was the norm. To improve public perception of vaccines and public health, according to MacIntyre, we need 'political will, global cooperation and an integrated approach'. Inconvenient Women Jacqueline Kent NewSouth, $34.99 May 1 Jacqueline Kent's titular women are the 'daughters of the suffragists, the mothers of … 1970s feminists'. These are the writers, ranging from Jean Devanny, author of the controversial The Butcher Shop, to Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), Katharine Susannah Prichard and Nettie Palmer, who 'used their power with words in support of their beliefs, and to question and change elements of the world'. There are plenty of familiar names, but many not so well known, and Kent brings her cast of writers effortlessly to life. The Power of Choice Julian Kingma NewSouth, $49.99 May 1 Julian Kingma is a wonderful photographer. In this book, he has chosen to photograph terminally ill people who have decided to make use of Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation to ease their anxiety about death and regain dignity through their control of it. His stark black and white images are confronting, tender, beautiful, and terribly revealing. As 82-year-old former yoga teacher Liberty Pack says, 'I have no anxiety. I have a very peaceful feeling about the way my end will be.' The Power of Choice also has short introductions by Andrew Denton and Richard Flanagan. The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Vuong Jonathan Cape, $34.99 May 13 The American poet and novelist won acclaim for his first novel, the brilliantly titled On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and follows it up with a story that begins with 19-year-old Haia about to jump from a bridge. He is stopped by an old Latvian woman, Grazina, suffering from dementia, who invites the troubled youth to stay with her. Both are struggling, but the connection they form through their friendship − their love − from their particular edges of American society brings meaning to them both. Loading The Names Florence Knapp Phoenix, $32.99 May 13 Does it matter what name you have? In Florence Knapp's first novel, Cora gives birth to a boy and wants to call him Julian. Her domineering husband reckons he should be named Gordon, as he is, while her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, reckons the moniker should be Bear. And so Knapp gives us three versions of the boy's life when the family circumstances are at times grim, and his life takes differing paths depending on his name. There's big word of mouth in the publishing world about this sliding doors novel.
