Hanne is different to the other girls and the other girls know this, or so Hanne believes. She feels lonely because of her differences.
She then meets Thea and friendship, followed by love, blossoms. But they are to be ripped apart.
Thea and Hanne devise a plan so they will never be parted. And it involves the Book of Moses. Hanne comes from a devout community of Lutherans but Thea’s mother practices ‘witchcraft’. They both put their trust in magic to stop them from being separated. But was it enough and has it worked?
Fleeing the village to avoid persecution from the King, the community, including the girls, are separated.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

What an incredible emotional journey. Hannah Kent writes with such knowing, such vivid imagery, such beautiful heartfelt prose and such devotion to her protagonists that I cupped my heart to stop it bleeding out.

A beautiful, moving story, lyrically told. I enjoyed this book immensely. It may not have the wide appeal as Burial Rites but I think fans of The Mercies will hugely enjoy this.

“Why do men bother with churches at all when instead they might make cathedrals out of sky and water? Better a chorus of birds than a choir. Better an altar of leaves. Baptise me in rainfall and crown me with sunrise. If I am still, somehow, God’s child, let me find grace in the mystery of bat-shriek and honeycomb.”

My thanks to Pan Macmillan Picador for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Devotion’ by Hannah Kent,in exchange for an honest review.

I have read both of Hannah Kent’s previous novels, ‘Burial Rites’ and ‘The Good People’, and found both beautifully written works of literary historical fiction. In ‘Devotion’ Kent again has written a haunting tale that focuses on a small community of devout Christians living in Prussia.

Opening in 1836 ‘Devotion’ is the testimony of Hanne, a young woman born into a community of Old Lutherans. Hanne is a child of nature though now as she is turning fifteen she will soon be expected to assume a more conventional place in the community; to marry and bear children. When a new family moves into their village Hanne finds a kindred spirit in Thea, whose mother is rumoured to be a ‘hexe’, a witch. Eventually a forbidden love blossoms between them.

Due to the threat of religious persecution the community is forced to worship in secret. Then they are granted safe passage to Australia, where they will be free to worship. Yet they face a brutal sea journey lasting six months. The journey will also test the bond between Thea and Hanne.

This was a beautiful tale that took an unexpected direction halfway through. I won’t expand on this in order to avoid spoilers but it left me stunned.

The horrors of the long sea voyage is tempered by the lyrical beauty of Hanne’s observations throughout and especially of the landscapes of Australia as the community establishes itself there.

While ‘Devotion’ portrays a fictional community, Hannah Kent acknowledges in her Author’s Note: “In writing this book I do not seek to glorify, simplify or sentimentalise the colonisation of Australia. The land ‘settled’ by the Old Lutherans who established Hahndorf and other villages in the Adelaide Hills had been inhabited for millennia by the original custodians of the land, the Peramangk people.” This recognition of the sovereignty of the land was a very important element and further enhanced my appreciation.

Overall, I found ‘Devotion’ an exquisitely written historical novel, meticulously researched, a lyrical celebration of nature and a moving love story with an inspiring mystical perspective.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

Beautiful writing again from Hannah Kent in this gently paced novel set in 1830s Prussia and Australia. I particularly enjoyed the first half of the book with its lyrical evocation of sensations and place in Hanne's native Prussia, and the claustrophobic accounts of life on board the ship later on serve to intensify her earlier freedoms of the forest. Without spoiling the plot, some of the later sections take us outside the tight relationships we have already seen in a rather surprising way. Although this dislocation is a little unsettling at first, it is certainly worth persevering with the book to the end. An unusual and absorbing read!

DNF at 30%. Sadly I am too bored to continue. Even this 30% has been a chore to read, I simply don't have the energy to continue forcing myself to finish it. I would have loved a richer description of the ethnic groups featured in the novel, but instead the accent is on Hanne and her inner world, with the start of her budding love for another girl ...a bit cliche at this point, at least for me. I am not sure where to story will go from here, but reading other reviews it seems to be going downhill, with fantastical element thrown in...I am really unsure I'd gain anything from continuing reading ...

Many thanks for the opportunity to read this.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Historical Fiction at its finest. Set in 1836 Prussia, where members of the Old Lutheran church must worship secretly, our main character and her family are given the opportunity to emigrate to Australia, to religious freedom - so they board a ship and set sail - and I warn you now; the descriptions of the grim cramped conditions on board were vivid to say the least.

The story follows teenagers Hanne and newcomer Thea, and revolves around their relationship as they find love and themselves. Hanne is fascinating, a child at one with nature, and unlike other girls of her age, I found her such a compelling character.

I won't say more for fear of spoiling anything, only that Devotion is a slow-paced book to spend time with, to get lost and indulge in the truly beautiful writing. It is lyrical, it is poetic, it is moving. This is a story that entices you in, and then surrounds your heart. A genuinely emotional journey, for both the characters and the reader. This is the second novel I have read by Hannah Kent, and I will absolutely be reading anything else she writes.

There is only one writer who could have pulled off Devotion, and luckily that writer is Hannah Kent!

Set between 1830s Prussia and South Australia, this novel is both a love story, and a love letter to the past. It’s very difficult to write a full review without giving spoilers, but suffice to say if you’ve read any of these reviews you know that, at the halfway point, something happens that will make you groan. Persevere and you will be rewarded. And, unlike so many works of literary fiction, this novel has a happy ending, in a roundabout way.

A very special story, with lush historical detail.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this arc!

I liked the beautiful writing in this and the twist on what I thought would be straightforward historical fiction—your impression of this book will depend a lot on how you feel about what happens midway through (for the record, I enjoyed it). It didn’t quite stick the landing for me, but I think fans of books like The Mercies would enjoy this very much!

Growing up in an Old Lutheran community in 19th century Prussia, Hanne finds herself out of step with the other teenage girls. While they seem happy with the domestic world awaiting them as wives and mothers, she regrets the passing of her childhood when she was allowed to run free in the fields and forests surrounding her home. Then a new family move to the area, and Hanne meets Thea; an unbreakable bond forming between the two.
Their community though is under threat; their particular form of worship no longer tolerated. So, when it becomes possible to emigrate to Australia, the village elders vote in favour of the idea. It's not a simple move. Long months of travel by barge to the coast, then ship lie ahead of them, and it isn't without its losses.

It's difficult to describe this latest book by Hannah Kent without giving away much of the plot. I suppose put briefly it's a sapphic historical romance with supernatural elements, but that doesn't go anywhere towards acknowledging Kent's beautiful, lyrical prose, and vivid, intimate descriptions of nature, from German forests to Australian outback.
Hanne is truly at one with her surroundings, appearing to have a form of synaesthesia which allows her to experience the world differently; to hear actual music in the dripping of the rain, the swirling of storm clouds or the movement of stars, and even become part of living creatures.
The story is, by turns, warm and raw, heartbreaking and filled with love, as Hanne and Thea's relationship is torn apart by death but still surviving in their hearts. My first five star book of the year, and one I'd heartily recommend.

My thanks to the Author publisher's and NetGalley for providing me with a Kindle version of this book to read and honestly review.
As a grumpy sixty four years old Yorkshireman I doubt very much I am the target audience for this book, however I thoroughly enjoyed it. A tale of persecuted Old Lutherans leaving Prussia for the promise of a new free life in Australia. This is an original quirky love story, at times emotional and raw, at others even this gruff old bloke found it heart breaking and moving.
Beautifully written atmospheric clever descriptive with a couple of mouth gaping twists. This Author is a master of the craft whose characters leap off the page so much so you feel a part of the tale.
Completely absorbing.

This book was not what I expected it to be. Beautifully tragic, graceful and moving. Devotion by Hannah Kent is a historical fiction novel set primarily in 1830’s Prussia and South Australia. The story of Hanne, a young woman so ostracised from her community that she finds herself instead drawn to the nature around her. She listens to the trees sing and can feel water whisper miles beneath the earth. Because of this Hanne doesn’t have many friends, apart from her twin brother, but when a new family move into their close knit community Hanne finds a companion in her loneliness; Thea.

The two are instantly drawn to each other, finding comfort in their friendship during uncertain times. Their adventurous moments in the beginning of the novel were some of my favourites passages. From laying on forest floors, becoming one with the tree roots and moss, to sneaking into the Church which had been abandoned for a more secretively hushed form of worship by the townsfolk. Their friendship blossoms as the novel takes on a new kind of shine. That is until the two are uprooted by their families being given the chance to find a new life in Australia.

Hanne and Thea’s lives, as their small community embarks on the journey from Prussia to South Australia to find religious freedom, are changed so drastically and tragically that it made the whole book stop. Whilst the first half was a beautifully poetic exploration of first love, when we find ourself trapped on the disease ridden boat it feels like all hope is lost. Then the book takes a sudden but equally mesmerising turn.

As the community arrive in their new home things turn somehow more mystifying as Hanne and Thea are changed forever by the nature of the landscape and are left to deal with the devastating consequences of the journey that brought them there.

A poetic novel that is rich with flavour and decadent descriptions and full to the brim with emotion, tragedy and love. And still somehow it was so easy to get lost between the pages. I could not put it down. Hanes physical and emotional journey through this novel is so perfectly paced as she tries to understand how to be a woman rather than a girl.

We all know my favourite niche genre is sapphic historical fiction and this book delivers in every aspect. I found it really hard to think of any book that is even remotely similar. The historical story telling has the same power of a Mary Renault or Sarah Waters novel, so if you are a fan of their historical writing then this is definitely for you. However this book has a different approach to the genre and leans very heavily into the coming of age aspects of the story which I feel appeal to those who are a fan of books like Last Night At The Telegraph Club.

This book is finally released tomorrow!!!! I will definitely be picking up a physical copy tomorrow and so should you!

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

I have read and enjoyed both of Hannah Kent's previous novels, the last of which was published five years ago. So I was looking forward to Devotion and I was not disappointed, although I did find it more uneven than Burial Rites and The Good People (hence the 3-star rating).

The setting of the first half of the novel is Prussia in 1836, in a village of Old Lutherans who have been forbidden from practicing their faith. Their pastor has fled to London to escape persecution, and their churches have been pulled down. They are imprisoned if caught worshipping, so their church is now the woods surrounding the village. They dream of starting a new life, and the opportunity comes in the form of a benefactor who pays their passage to Australia. But Hanne has more immediate things on her mind. At nearly fifteen she is regarded as a woman now, and her days are no longer free to roam the woods and commune with nature and the elements. She is an awkward young woman at an awkward stage in her life - a child of nature, she is considered strange by the other girls in the village, and is friendless but happy to be a free spirited misfit. When a new family move in, however, Hanne and their daughter Thea instantly form a strong bond, recognising themselves in each other. The new family too are regarded with suspicion by the local community, as Thea's mother is a Wend, of Slav origin, and rumoured to be a witch in possession of the sixth and seventh books of Moses - a benign herbal, or something darker?

Against the background of the preparations to leave for Australia, Hanne and Thea's friendship deepens, and, unspoken and inconceivable, becomes something more. As the long journey to the southern hemisphere begins, the two girls are wrapped up in each other, Hanne's overwhelming fear being that she and Thea may be separated.

The details of the ship journey are meticulously researched and vividly described, and tell a tale more pertinent than ever today of the horrors people are prepared to endure to escape persecution. The journey marks a distinct change in direction for the story, with a catastrophic event that moves the novel into a distinctly supernatural second half. Because of this narrative conceit, I found the second half to be more detached in the telling, and therefore less immediately engaging, than the first part. And a period of twelve or thirteen years gets as much space as a few months did in the first half, so that made it feel somewhat uneven too.

"The testimony of love is the backbone of the universe. It is the taproot from which all stories spring." This story, dedicated to the author's wife, is a testimony to a love that is stronger than time, whispered to the wind in the hope that it will somehow reach down the ages. The language throughout is lyrical and harks to the sacred, as befits a tale told by a woman whose temple is nature. Nature is described as sound and music - the rain dripping from trees is 'a concord of bells', a tree trunk drums in a storm, the sky chants low cloud, the sky is loud with stars, in the rain Hanne is bathed in hymns of water. It is a very visual book, beautifully written, described in rich detail. The story almost doesn't do justice to the glory of the language. But nevertheless, there is a great deal to enjoy in this book of two halves, and here's hoping Hannah Kent's next book doesn't take another five years to write.

This book was really something rather special. It’s hard to talk about much of it without giving some of the most important plot points away and I think the best thing about this book is the surprises it contains so I’ll be talking about it in a very general sense in this review. Kent’s first book, Burial Rites was a book I recommended to multiple people and I’ll be doing the same with this one.

Hanne is a young girl growing up in a Lutheran community in Prussia. She feels set apart and disconnected from others in her community and is more at home in the natural world that surrounds her village. Her affinity for nature manifests in a multisensory experience and she can sense things that others are not aware of such as water running underground or the feelings of trees. She is close to her twin brother Matthias but struggles to connect with her parents, in particular her mother. When she meets Thea, an incomer to the community of a similar age to Hanne, and her family, her life is changed forever.

The Lutheran religious stuff could have been a complete snoozefest but it somehow wasn’t. I always like it when I read a book and have the opportunity to learn something about a community I am completely unfamiliar with. The different members of the community come to life with their private struggles, petty small-mindedness and determination to survive all explored throughout the narrative. The different settings are vibrantly described and the hardships experienced by the colonists as they adapt to their new life in Australia, as well as their relationships with the native Peramangk community are all vivid and believable. The boat journey was portrayed particularly well with the claustrophobia and desperate conditions described in unflinching detail.

At the very centre of the story is the friendship, and then love, between Hanne and Thea. Their relationship is beautiful and heart-breaking and is one of the best examples of enduring love I have ever seen put to print. As well as the central romantic relationship, this book also explores the many different facets of love experienced during a lifetime including familial love, and the love for life and nature. I found the relationship between Hanne and her mother particularly affecting and thought-provoking. It sounds trite to say ‘as a mother myself…’ but aspects of motherhood and sacrifice that will be familiar to many are portrayed movingly here.

There are some supernatural elements to this story and how these elements are described really highlight Kent’s strengths as an author and her skilful use of evocative language to describe the indescribable. Some of the passages in this book were utterly beautiful and I found myself reading them over and over again to fully appreciate them. Kent manages to capture such complexity of feeling in words that I struggle to even have words to describe it. I cried a LOT reading this book which to me is a sign that someone has produced a stunning piece of work.

My only small issue was a major plot point and source of conflict between Thea’s mother, Anna-Maria, and the rest of the community that went nowhere when it came to a head and I was curious to know how that played out in the future of the community. But a tiny niggle in amongst an almost perfect book wasn’t enough to take the shine off.

About a quarter of a way through Hannah Kent's third novel, Devotion, I was certain I knew exactly where this story would go. Our narrator is Hanne, a teenage girl growing up in a Lutheran community in Prussia that has suffered religious persecution, who is Not Like Other Girls because she can hear the trees sing. When she meets Thea, another teenage girl who seems destined to be an outcast because her mother is Suspected of Being A Witch, they fall instantly in love. Thus goes the first quarter of Devotion, with Hanne's irritating obsession with Thea feeling one-sided even though it is not. I had mixed feelings about Kent's debut, Burial Rites, because I thought the third-person sections were beautifully written but the first-person sections were overblown - and Devotion, narrated solely in the third person, dials it up to eleven, with page after page of prose like this: 'Thea, in all incarnations, wherever my soul has resided, I have loved you, am loving you, will love you. If the earth one day burns out its charge, you will find me in the ash. If the sea dries, find me in its sand. Fingers forever writing your name in ash, in sand, over and over in a love-patterned wasteland.'

As Hanne and Thea's community board a ship for a six-month voyage to Australia, the novel starts to become more distinctive - Kent's account of shipboard life is vivid and meticulously researched - and I started to hope that we'd see more of Hanne and Thea as individuals and why they love each other so much, rather than just being told that they are hopelessly inseparable. But then, the novel takes an... unexpected turn.

SPOILERS

After catching typhus on the ship, Hanne dies and narrates the remaining half of the novel as a ghost. Even more creepily, Hanne works out she can possess living things and spends some time hopping between various animals in the community's new settlement, before possessing Thea's husband so she can have sex with her and 'conceive' a child that she thinks of as hers. Although this turn of events is pretty ridiculous, it certainly made the novel far less predictable, and I found myself enjoying it a lot more, if not perhaps for the right reasons. In some ways, I can see why Kent made this narrative choice: Hanne's ghostly point of view gives us the chance to see the community as a whole, rather than confining us to her head, and I also liked the perspective it gave us on Thea's grief. However, Kent doesn't make the most of Hanne's expanded perception; we don't really find out anything about the other characters we didn't already know. And because I never really believed in Hanne and Thea's love anyway, it also made Hanne seem even more terrifyingly obsessive!

END SPOILERS

I'm not sure if I recommend Devotion or not - it didn't work for me on its own terms, but I did admire Kent's daring, and I'd still like to read her second novel, The Good People.

"If the earth one day burns out its charge, you will find me in the ash. If the sea dries, find me in its sand. Fingers forever writing your name in ash, in sand, over and over in a love-patterned wasteland."


Holy hell, I may not have read Hannah Kent before, but catch me spending this month tearing through her back catalogue. Kent’s third novel is set between Prussia and Australia in the 1830s - it follows Hanne, a young, slightly odd and friendless girl living in a small community of Old Lutherans, a religious sect that are persecuted by the government of their nation. Two things change Hanne’s life very quickly - her village are given passage to Australia to begin a new life, and she meets Dorothea Eichenwald, a teenager who has moved to the village and with whom Hanne makes a connection with very quickly.

Thea and Hanne face emigration together, but forces beyond both of their control will change things for them beyond belief. The relationship between Hanne and Thea is the core of the novel; the two weather immense storms together including one so shocking I had to physically put the book down. But their love for one another is tantamount and it shines on the page. The novel, at times, reads as a long love letter - Hanne is out point-of-view character and so we feel the intensity of her teenage emotions raging through her like fire. Yet Hanne’s religious beliefs keep her chaste and longing for Thea; Kent uses the tension between what Hanne feels and her strict beliefs to keep what could seem overwrought propulsive and engaging.

Kent is an unbelievably assured writer - this novel is based on the nineteenth-century colonisation of Australia, and it is very well researched. But it’s no flavourless historical novel - Kent is a lyrical writer who makes poetry from prose - nature, family and love are beautifully rendered in her writings and it’s not often you will find a historically accurate writer who writes so beautifully. As well as this gorgeous writing, her style is immensely evocative; at times I could feel the salt spray, taste the dry ship rations, and feel my heart break for the community when hard times fall. She doesn’t shy away from the grimmer aspects of Old Lutheran life - characters backstab and betray one another, the body count is much higher than I expected, and women, though spirited and sure-minded, are forced to marry in order to keep a roof over their heads. I love stories of women in close-minded communities who find ways to undermine them, and Devotion delivered this in spades.

While this is a dark novel, with plenty of heart-wrenching moments, it’s a rich, emotive and betwitching story that will stay with the reader long after it’s finished.

A beautifully written story about queer love, longing, death and devotion... and ghosts. Hannah Kent's writing about nature and little moments is delicate and hopeful, no matter how sad the circumstances may be. I really enjoyed spending time with this novel. The fact that Hannah Kent considers this book as one big giant love letter to her wife Heidi is just wonderful and adds another layer to this wonderful novel.

Devotion is the third novel by best-selling award-winning Australian author, Hannah Kent. Hanne Nussbaum is almost fifteen when the Eichenwald family join their Old Lutheran community in the Prussian village of Kay. Hanne is friendless, connecting better with the sky and the trees, the river and the stars, than people, her twin brother Matthias the only one who understands her even a bit.

“Even as a young child I had felt that girls forsook on whim and offered only inconstant friendship. Allegiances seemed to shift from day to day like sandbanks in a riverbed and, inevitably, I found myself run aground. Better to befriend a blanket of moss, the slip-quick of fish dart. Never was the love I poured into the river refused.”

But Anna Maria Eichenwald seems to see her, to understand her instantly. When Hanne encounters Anna Maria’s daughter, Thea for the first time in her beloved forest, there’s none of the scorn the other village girls aim at her. Instead, Thea offers acceptance and interest. They quickly become close, trying to be together at every opportunity.

Their community, having rejected the King’s union of the Protestant Churches, has to worship in secret; their pastor has fled, their church, bell removed, is locked by soldiers. The chance to leave, to emigrate to another land, a place where they will not be persecuted, is welcomed by the elders, but Hanne fears it will tear her from Thea: will the Eichenwalds join them?

After an emotional leave-taking, a tiring journey to the port and delays, some two hundred souls finally cram into a ship with eighty berths for a six-month journey to South Australia. Crowded together, with less than optimum nutrition and water from tainted barrels, illness inevitably strikes, and a reduced number arrives at their longed-for paradise, the place they will build, Heiligendorf, their joy tempered by grief.

Years later Hanne shares what she saw, heard, took part in: “I have described what has happened to me, and what I felt, and what I continue to feel. Gathered up and thrown on the wind to be wound on the air. To stir leaves and gutter candles and fill the sails of ships. I am unthreaded of it. I am the empty eye of the needle.”

Once again, Kent gives the reader a masterpiece, a tale of love and grief and steadfastness. She describes a community persecuted for their beliefs, but who, when free to follow those beliefs, display less tolerance than might be hoped. The depth of her research into so many aspects of the lives of such a community is apparent on every page. Emotions are expertly rendered.

Her prose is often exquisite, poetic: “The wings drew closer, beating against the sky. Rippling it. Cut the light with feathered knives” and “I had felt affirmation in my bones and blood and the wick of my soul had caught flame, had burned bright” and “And the birds, ever here, ever singing, a liturgy to govern the hours towards gods of cry and shriek and call. Kookaburra, magpie, shrike-thrush, wagtail. Currawong, crow, boobook. Scripture may no longer roll off my tongue in smooth certainty, but my mouth is still full of spirit. Holy Writ of living things, each one a prayer against the teeth” are examples.

Hanne’s description of aboriginal dance: “The Peramangk were the first people I ever saw dancing… The music was unlike anything I had heard before. It threaded itself under my skin until I felt sewn through with sound, and then it pulled me to its source… the beauty and urgency of their movement was everything I had imagined dancing might be, their bodies shaped and held by a music that was closer to the sound I heard coming from the earth than any hymn of my homeland.” This is an absolute pleasure to read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Pan Macmillan

Early 19th century Prussia isn't a welcoming place for those who follow the Old Lutheran faith. Hanne and her family live in a small rural community and worship in secret, in the forest, which is also the place where nature-loving Hanne feels most at peace. Her life seems mapped out: marriage to a boy from a good Lutheran family; a farmstead in the same Prussian village she's known all her life; child-bearing; devotion to her faith in the face of state persecution. But when first a new family move to the village with their 15 year old daughter, Thea, and then her community is offered a chance for safe passage to Australia, Hanne's life is upended.

Devotion is very much a book of two halves, and to go into too much detail regarding the second would be to give too much away. It's also an enormously poetic book, beautifully written and meditative. Above all, it reads like a novel-length love letter: personal, intimate and, at times, overwrought.

That’s 3 out of 3 novels I’ve read now by Australian author Hannah Kent, a prospect I’d so anticipated that I highlighted this new title in my “Looking Back, Looking Forward” post.
Her 2013 debut “Burial Rites” recreated nineteenth century Iceland, incorporating Icelandic sagas into the narrative and a use of documents and reports which really impressed me but I gave the slight edge to 2017’s “The Good People” set in a nineteenth century Irish village entrenched with folklore and fairies in a dark, foreboding read. It’s three good four star reads in a row as far as I am concerned but maybe if forced to rank them “Devotion” would be at number three.
We are still in the nineteenth century but we begin in Kay, a Prussian village and a small community of Old Lutherans facing persecution for their beliefs. Amongst them is narrator Hanne, an adolescent who sees herself as “forever nature’s child” and as an outsider to the rest of the community content with adhering to the traditions of the forefathers. Into this mix comes a new family, the Eichenwalds with mother Anna Maria, a midwife from outside the region, whose unconventional treatments arouse suspicion and daughter Thea who recognises Hanne as a kindred spirit.
So far this feels like we are on typical Kent territory with her doing what she does so well evoking a small community battling with tradition and a fear of new ideas but this is very much a book of three parts, with a marked tonal shift in each.
The second part ramps up the adventure stakes with the community’s response to persecution and the third, with what happens afterwards becomes more lyrical, spiritual and poetic. Compared to her other novels this has the same focused intensity but here the plot events bring about a sense of space which gives contrast to the pressures of small space living
This is very much a love story between Hanne and Thea as suggested by the “Devotion” of the title and this is the unifying strength between the three parts. This is touching, often heart-breaking and effectively conveyed throughout.
There seems to be a 4-5 year gap between Hannah Kent’s novels, which always feel thoroughly researched and may explain this but her third novel should cement her reputation as a very good historical writer and will give new readers who come to her via this publication a chance to catch up with her work so far whilst waiting for her next book to appear.
Devotion is published in the UK on February 3rd by Picador. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Devotion tells the tale of a girl, Hanne, and her burgeoning sense of growing into a young woman in a small town in Germany in the 1800s, a place where religion is taken as a given, and where a relative uniformity of society means that everyone knows what they are doing- you're either at church, praying, or carrying out some kind of task essential for society (harvesting food, building something or raising children). The phrase, since tainted by its associations with Nazism, 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche' (Children, Kitchen, Church) is invoked at one point in the text, and it feels entirely in line with the expectations on women in the society we are shown.

But in amongst all of this, we have a new family, who others are quick to point out are not German, or at least they are but only by marriage. These newcomers, Anna Maria and her daughter Thea, are seen as witches. The fact that they have a book in their possession that is rumoured to be variously a recipe guide for herbs, a spell book, or something satanic, does not help matters.

Having met this cast, something truly special begins to unfold- the dawning of a relationship between Hanne and Thea. At first tentative and coy, and later more spoken, it was truly beautiful in its delivery. Without spoiling what happens next, the story begins to swing into something more supernatural or spiritual, but without, to me at least, feeling schmaltzy or frivolous.

The language throughout this book is beautiful- a gorgeous lyricism flows throughout the book in a way that was by turns tender, harrowing and thrilling, and kept the more supernatural elements of the book feeling weighty and poignant to me.

This is the first book of Kent's I've read, and I now feel like I have been sorely missing out.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.