RaveThe GuardianKent brilliantly conjures the sly malice of this folkloric blame culture ... What follows is a kind of Erse reboot of The Exorcist. We turn the pages with increasing horror as the remedies meted out to Micheál become increasingly harsh. The Good People is a novel about how competing systems of thought – religious, medical, folkloric and, eventually, legal – attempt to make sense of the bad stuff that happens ... Another author might satirise or ridicule such beliefs, lead the characters more obviously to see the error of their ways. Here the reader is left to make up his or her own mind about whether the priest, judge or shaman might offer the most convincing account of the novel’s mysteries. Kent has a terrific feel for the language of her setting. The prose is richly textured with evocative vocabulary – skib, spancel, creepie stool – and despite occasionally straining a little too hard for poetic effect, the overall result is to transport the reader deep into the rural Irish hinterlands. This is a serious and compelling novel about how those in desperate circumstances cling to ritual as a bulwark against their own powerlessness.
