Neo-Victorian Voices: Burial Rites, Hannah Kent (2013)

After blogging about Finnish Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea last month, I’m sticking with the Nordic theme for the next book I’m writing about as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series, reviewing novels written in the twenty-first century but set in the nineteenth. Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites (2013) tells the bleak story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be executed for murder in Iceland. 

It’s 1829 and Agnes has already been sentenced to death when the book begins. Now, due to Iceland’s lack of prison, as bureaucracy around her sentence continues (what weapon should be used to cut off her head and who should wield it?), she’s sent to live with a family of farmers who are less than pleased to have a convicted killer in their mix.

Through Agnes’s interactions with her reluctant keepers and with an assistant reverend sent to prepare her for death, we gradually learn how the murders unfolded. There’s no twist here—we know what will happen to Agnes from the book’s first pages, and we stay with her until the bitter end.

The novel is atmospheric, well-researched, and relentlessly realistic. This is historical fiction dripping with bodily fluids that reminds us how hard life was in the past, rather than a sanitized period drama. We don’t get many sweeping descriptions of the Icelandic landscape. Instead, the setting comes to life through the characters’ interactions with it. How do they survive or die in a world of snow and darkness? And how do they navigate the darkness, and potentially the familiar light, inside each other?

I’d recommend Burial Rites to lovers of realistic historical fiction that packs an emotional punch. But if you’re looking for a pick-me-up, this probably isn’t your next read. 

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Neo-Victorian Voices: Beasts of the Sea, Iida Turpeinen (2025)

Happy 2026 and welcome back to my Neo-Victorian Voices series, in which I review books written in the twenty-first century but set (at least partially) in the nineteenth. This time, for the first time, I’m writing about a novel translated into English from Finnish—Iida Turpeinen’s beautiful and unusual novel, Beasts of the Sea. 

The novel begins in 1741 when a shipwrecked crew on an island between Russia and Alaska comes into contact with a species of sirenian that will come to be known as Steller’s sea cow. Next, we move forward to 1859 when the governor of a Russian colony in Alaska seeks a Steller’s sea cow skeleton, after the species was hunted to extinction within 30 years of human contact. Finally, we jump to the twentieth century, to discover how the skeleton entered the collection of the Finnish Museum of Zoology and how, over the centuries, naturalists shifted their research methods to preserve other lifeforms, instead of destroying them.

Even from this short summary, it’s easy to tell that this is not a typical novel. There are memorable characters, but our time with each of them is deliberately brief. The scope and ambition of the book is sweeping, and the fleeting nature of mammalian life is one of the novel’s central themes. Don’t expect: dialogue, romance, traditional plot beats, straightforward villains, or a predictable structure. Do expect: empathetic and moving descriptions of non-human and human perspectives, grief for the many animal species we’ve lost, and meticulous authorial research. 

I’ve been recommending the novel to anyone who’ll listen, but I remain perplexed by my own readerly reactions. How can the same book make me wish I was a vegetarian, while also leaving me salivating at its descriptions of the never-to-be-tasted delicacy of the sea cow’s flesh? I guess that’s the conundrum of being human: we have the capacity to imagine, to write, to read, and to feel, while we remain the planet’s most dangerous predator. 

Which novel should I review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates on my blog and writing? Sign up for my newsletter here.