Kent 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.
Kent’s suspenseful storytelling plunges readers into early 19th-century Ireland. She brings vivid life to the hardscrabble scenes: dingy cabins and backbreaking work and the grim hiring fairs where poor children sell their labor to less poor people such as Nóra. When Nóra and Nance head off to confront the fairies, you can feel the mud sliding beneath their bare feet. Although The Good People is fiction, it faithfully represents the hold of ancient Celtic myths on generations of Irish. It also lays bare some hard truths about human nature and leaves you thinking about belief, suspicion and what happens to a community when fear takes hold.
Kent showcases botanical language and writes in a prose that’s often delectable. Her novel is more literary than thriller; for long stretches of the novel nothing much happens. There is but one central conflict, between Nóra and Micheál, but the resolution is decisive if unsatisfying. Meanwhile, the novel succeeds in imagining a community of violent ignorance and lassitude. As in Faulkner’s best, Kent presents us with shells of people, consumed with survival. (Two decades later, famine would ravage the Emerald Isle.) The novel’s more historical aspects are more interesting and credible than those supernatural—but when most folks believe in angels, one would not want to presume.
Add Kent to the list of terrific Australian novelists writing today. While Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies) mines modern marriage and mores for her page-turning mysteries, Kent (Burial Rites) goes back in time to find reality-based stories of women who pay the price for challenging society’s expectations. The Good People has great characters, a setting that seeps into your bones and the always compelling tug between the spiritual and the superstitious.
The Good People concerns the collision of ancient customs with the forces of modernization, in medicine, local government and the law. Ms. Kent has a knack for conjuring the unsettled spirit world through deft stylistic flourishes … The Good People is far from a high-handed condemnation of superstitious belief. It makes the terrors of the past feel palpable and imminent.
Foreboding builds from the get-go of The Good People, Hannah Kent’s haunting historical novel about a rural Irish community gripped by sudden death and suspicion ... It’s 1825, and the people in the hills near Killarney strike an uneasy balance between the sacred and the superstitious: rosary beads in one pocket, and cold embers to ward off evil spirits in the other ... Kent’s suspenseful storytelling plunges readers into early 19th century Ireland. She brings vivid life to the hardscrabble scenes... Although The Good People is fiction, it faithfully represents the hold of ancient Celtic myths on generations of Irish ...bare some hard truths about human nature and leaves you thinking about belief, suspicion and what happens to a community when fear takes hold.
...Kent's immersive setting, benefiting from impressive historical research and the use of Gaelic vocabulary, features both a dramatically alive natural world and a believably fearsome supernatural one. Inspired by true events and exploring those places where reason, religion, and superstition cross paths, this will please lovers of haunting literary fiction.
Kent’s well-researched tale is inspired by newspaper reports of an actual attempt in 19th-century Ireland to banish a changeling. Peppered with Gaelic words and phrases and frequent references to bygone beliefs and practices, this brutal telling of a brutal story invites discussion and revulsion. If Stevie Wonder is correct, when you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer. Kent’s novel validates his indictment of superstition.
Though rife with description, backstory, and a surfeit of gossip, the book’s pervasive sense of foreboding and clear narrative arcs keep the tale immersive. Kent leads the reader on a rocky, disquieting journey to the misty crossroads of Irish folk beliefs past and future.
